We Are the Men in Black
by Velgamidragon
Summary: AU inspired by DragonlordRynn's "Black". The Black Organization is secretly the Japanese branch of the Men in Black and APTX-4869 was made to shrink its victim. Kudo was shrunk for his own protection, and Sherry shrunk to protect Dr. Agasa and go into hiding. Vermouth was behaving suspiciously as of late, and Gin was determined to find out and expose her secret agenda.
1. The Girl From the Black Organization

**Author's Note: The concept for t** **his fic was inspired by DragonlordRynn's own DC fic titled "Black" and I informed them of such. Essentially, the concept is that the Black Organization is actually the Japanese branch of the Men in Black. I recommend reading their fic for more background/details. What _I_ wanted to do was take that concept and explore my DC guilty pleasure OTP (GinSherry) keeping in mind that both Gin and Sherry are working in alien law enforcement and thus making Gin not a villain and Sherry having no need to fear him the way she does in canon.  
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 **My only warning is that Gin may act somewhat OOC compared to his canon self because this is an AU where Gin isn't a criminal, much less a villain. As a result, you should not expect him to respond to all situations the exact same way that canon!Gin would.**

 **EDIT 1/19/18: Since this story has now decided to have a real plot, the chapters from chapter 5 onward will no longer just be a series of loosely-connected oneshots and it will also no longer be marked as 'Complete' until the story is actually finished. I have no way of knowing how long that will take since this wasn't my original plan.**

 **EDIT 11/6/18: The rating of this story has been changed to 'M' due to Gin and Sherry misbehaving a couple times in later chapters. With exception to those couple scenes, the majority of the story is still a 'T' rating.**

 **Disclaimer: Detective Conan is owned by Gosho Aoyama-san and the concept for this fic was inspired by DragonlordRynn's own DC fic titled "Black".** **  
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 **We Are the Men in Black**

The Girl From the Black Organization

It was after hours in one of the Black Organization's many laboratories and as such, the lights were dim and almost all the rooms were empty. 'Almost' being the operative word. Two individuals still remained in one room near the computers, one of them pressed against the wall by the other and no space between the two. One possessed a woman's figure and wore a white lab coat over a short red dress while the other was a tall man with long ash-blond hair falling well down to his thighs and adorning an even longer black trench coat. Their lips were locked together and their bodies pressed flush against each other, panting and moaning in frantic desperation.

One of the man's hands managed to slide her lab coat off her shoulders while the other caressed every plane and curve of her body he could reach. The woman's hands were wrapped tightly into his long locks and she had hooked one of her legs around his, pulling it to her and squeezing it between her thighs. The woman suddenly released the man's long hair and her hand instead drifted down to the sash at his waist which she quickly untied then slid open the top half of his coat. He shrugged out of it on his own without her tugging, releasing her momentarily, and the black garment fell to the floor in a heap at their feet. A shuddering gasp escaped his lips shortly after when he felt her small, cool hands slip under the hem of his turtleneck and ghost teasingly up his chest. In retaliation, he nipped her neck and slid his hand between her thighs. She released a breathy moan in response, but she seemed to come back to herself. Though her eyes retained a glassy look, they were more focused than before.

"Gin, no, I shouldn't. You've already delayed me too long. I _have_ to go," the auburn-haired woman said firmly, grabbing the wrist of the hand at her groin and pulling it away.

"Sherry…" he growled, his frustration clearly audible.

" _No_ , I was supposed to go yesterday, but instead I let you indulge as a parting gift until it's safe for me to come back. Besides, this mission is important for the Organization, and you know it."

Gin groaned and stooped down to retrieve his fallen coat. "Sherry, this mission has no time limit. It's indefinite until either 'that person' arbitrarily decides otherwise, or we can somehow eliminate the threat to the Arquillian."

Sherry only smirked deviously down at him. "I love you, Gin, but as long as I'm the _only_ one who holds your heart, I promise I won't get jealous if you sleep around with other women – or men, I won't judge – while waiting for me to grow up again, if it comes to that."

Gin glared at her through his bangs as he rose back up to his full, impressive height. "That's not funny, Sherry. I'm already ten years older than you."

"And being twenty years older won't make that much more of a difference," she sighed, pushing away from the wall and walking around him back towards her abandoned computer.

"It is when I'll be in my mid-thirties and you'll be a minor just barely out of prepubescence."

"Gin, _enough_ ," she sighed in exasperation. She peered down at her screen and started typing, though she didn't stop speaking. "You know as well as I that there's only one reason the Klythonian spy killed and impersonated my sister. Something's trying to get into the Organization through me and they don't care if I'm killed in the process. I have to go into hiding regardless and I should just be grateful the Boss is allowing me to protect the Arquillian scientist _and_ watch over Kudo to have him unknowingly help keep secret that our Organization, the Men in Black, monitors alien activity on Earth. I won't be able to do anything else and using the same shrinking drug as Kudo wasn't my idea, but it really is the best way to keep me safe, so stop complaining about it. I won't be dead, I'll just be younger, so I'll still be able to reach you any time it's safe for me to talk without blowing my cover." She stopped typing for a moment and glared suspiciously over at him. "Unless you're saying that the only thing you're going to miss about my absence is the lack of sex."

Gin stared at her in stony silence and then purposefully made his way over to her. He gently turned her around so she faced him and Sherry raised a questioning eyebrow. Before she could open her mouth to ask him anything, Gin brought her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her tightly. She stood there in his embrace, puzzled for a moment by his overly-affectionate behavior, and then found herself sliding her hands up his sides to grip the back of his coat underneath all the long, fine hair. He was warm and solid and she nuzzled into his shoulder, catching the scent of smoke, leather, and plasma from his coat.

"Gin, this isn't like you. You're acting like you're never going to see me again," she said softly.

His arms tightened further. "When's the next time I'll be able to hold you like this?" he asked in a quiet murmur.

Sherry couldn't answer that. She tilted her head up to his and kissed his cheek though. "This won't be the last time, I promise you. But can I be selfish? Can you promise to wait for me and not die before we have that chance?"

His thick bangs obscured most of his face, but she could still make out the warmth in his forest green eyes and the faint smile on his lips as he gazed down at her. "If it'll bring you back home quicker…" he said, trailing off.

"You're sweet, you know that, right?" she said with a teasing smile and a quick peck to the tip of his long nose.

"You missed," he said.

Sherry quirked an eyebrow at him. "I missed, huh?"

He inclined his head, his smile shifting into a smirk. "Yes, you did." Without a word of explanation, he dipped his head down and captured her lips in a warm, firm kiss.

Sherry let herself enjoy the feeling and returned his kiss for a brief spell before pulling away. She didn't need him trying to seduce her again or she'd never leave, which was probably his point. He was being uncharacteristically clingy.

"It's time now," she said decisively, and forcibly withdrew from his warm embrace.

She shut off her computer, then picked up a small, sealed container sitting next to the mouse. She opened the lid and upended the plastic container into her palm. Out fell a small red and white-colored capsule, the shrinking drug she had created on behalf of the Organization and would put her safely undercover and out of sight of the aliens who were after her. Without a second's hesitation, Sherry popped the capsule into her mouth and dry-swallowed it. She felt it slip down her throat and she counted five seconds in which nothing happened when suddenly her whole body spasmed with the force of a bomb. A scream tore out of her throat and she collapsed to the floor, shaking in agony. It was pain beyond anything she'd ever known. Nothing, _nothing_ had ever hurt this much! She was blind and deaf to everything around her except the violent pulses that slammed into every corner of her body every few seconds and the burning, melting feeling of her bones! She would surely die from this! This body-mutilating pain could lead to no other result! It took literally every ounce of sheer willpower she possessed not to be thrown from her body into the world of unconsciousness. She feared if she did, she'd never wake up again, and she'd end up breaking her promise to Gin before it had even begun.

At last... belatedly... she realized too much time had passed in silence from the last bone-shattering spasm. Miraculously, Sherry had managed to remain conscious throughout the whole ordeal, though just barely. She wondered if the drug had finished working or if she was being too optimistic and would be treated to a second round of misery. She felt an abnormally large hand on her shoulder and was carefully turned over onto her back. Staring down at her was Gin, who seemed much larger than usual and was wearing an odd expression of slack-jawed horror that didn't suit him at all.

"Sherry… you're… you're alive…" he breathed at last.

Sherry frowned up at him slightly, though she could feel her concern for him growing when he released her shoulder and instead cupped her face with his hands. His eyes roamed frantically over her face and his voice was shaky as he spoke to her. She had felt like she was dying, but had it _looked_ like she was dying too?

"I'm alright, Gin…" Sherry tried to interrupt, but it came out as a barely audible croak. She had screamed herself hoarse.

Whether he'd actually heard her or merely managed to guess what she said, she had no idea, but his shoulders slumped in relief and the horror seemed to fade from his face a little. "Sherry, you stupid, reckless woman…" he laughed bleakly.

Gin's hands returned to her shoulders and he helped her sit up straight. She didn't have the energy to protest his assistance. When she looked down at herself, she found her white lab coat had completely slipped off her shoulders and the only reason it hadn't fallen off completely was because her arms were still trapped within the sleeves. She was now swimming in her red dress too. Where previously, it had fallen only to just above her knees, now it covered her ankles and feet as well.

"It looks like the drug worked. Time to go, I guess," she mused, her voice still a harsh, raspy sound, and carefully made to stand up.

"Already?" Sherry looked up into Gin's face, surprised to see him looking so startled. For a man ten years older than her who had been with the Men in Black for just as long and seen things she couldn't even imagine, he was taking this very poorly indeed.

"I have to," she repeated. "I shrunk, so now I have to go undercover, per my orders from 'that person'."

Gin gritted his teeth. "Sherry, look at you! You can't even stand without shaking; you're not in any fit state to go anywhere tonight!"

Damn, she was hoping he hadn't noticed. It didn't help her case at all when her legs suddenly buckled underneath her and he quickly caught her before she hit the ground again. This wasn't working. She needed to get a move on her mission, but she was in no position to do that without Gin's help, and right when she needed him to be focused on completing the mission, he was being deliberately unhelpful. She was already starting to regret the loss of her adult body. She butted heads with Gin on things all the time, but at least when she was an adult, she could simply brush past him and do what she had to. Even if he'd held her back in such instances, all she'd had to do was lock eyes with him and he would usually cave in for his lack of wanting to hurt her. Now though, she was both physically incapable of escaping him and her strong will meant nothing to him when her eyes were gazing at him from her smaller, more vulnerable child's body.

"Gin, I _have_ to go and it has to be tonight," she began again, appealing to his better nature. "It's my duty to the Organization and my loyalty to Earth's protection that compels me to go. It must be done and I will play my part as you must play yours. You know I'm right and you can't deny it, not to me."

He glared down at her with such hatred in his eyes that she worried she'd made a grave miscalculation, but then he growled, "That's playing dirty, Sherry."

Sherry was extremely careful to keep the relief out of her voice, just in case hearing it caused him to backtrack and be difficult out of spite. He could be petty like that sometimes. "So, you'll let me go then?" she asked.

"I don't have much of a choice, do I?" he grumbled, "But I'm not letting you walk all the way to the scientist's house like this, and especially not in the rain."

Sherry frowned briefly. "Rain? It's not supposed to rain until much later tonight."

Gin gave her a wry smirk. "Well, the weather forecast was wrong because I could hear it pounding on the roof right when you took the drug."

"Well, if you insist and it will make you feel better, then I suppose I can let you drive me to the scientist's house, but you'll have to park at the end of the street and let me walk down the block by myself," she said, removing herself from his supportive hold and fishing her cellphone out of one of her lab coat pockets. "He knows I'm supposed to be coming soon, so I just have to let him know it's tonight and give him the details of how I want the plan to proceed before we head out."

"And what exactly is involved in this plan of yours?" Gin asked, his tone full of suspicion.

She finished composing her message to Hiroshi Agasa first before turning back to Gin, who was now fully standing again. "On the off chance that anyone, human or alien, may be watching, I will leave your car – that will be parked in a poorly-lit area at the end of the street – and walk just past the scientist's house to the one next door. I will be dressed as I am now, newly-shrunk, soaking wet, desperate for help, and so exhausted that I collapse right in front of Kudo's house. Not long after, Dr. Agasa will see me lying there on the ground on his way home and will take me in out of the goodness of his heart. Thus, my cover as an escapee from the 'criminal syndicate called the Black Organization' will retain its authenticity."

"And the Arquillian knows this plan?" Gin pressed, looking stern. "You're not going to be lying on the sidewalk in the pouring rain waiting for hours for someone who's not coming?"

Sherry nodded. "Yes, that was the information I just sent him. To not make it too coincidental, he's supposed to find me at Kudo's house ten minutes after I collapse."

Gin looked positively livid. "Ten min- you'll catch a cold being out in the rain that long!" he protested.

She merely shrugged. "If I do, then it's better to catch a cold than be dead."

That seemed to shut him up for a moment. He crossed his arms and glowered down at her. "I don't like any of this one bit," he said at last, sounding petulant.

Sherry glared right back and mimicked his own posture. Who was the older adult here? "Whether you like it or not is irrelevant," she said coldly. "I'm acting on orders from the Boss and that's the plan I'm following, so you can either help me or stay out of my way. What will it be?"

The ultimatum sounded rather impressive considering that she had no idea how she'd enforce it if Gin continued to be difficult about this. She was counting heavily on his keen sense of loyalty to the Organization and orders from 'that person', but if his personal loyalty to _her_ won out over his professional attachments, then she was screwed and would have to play _really_ dirty to accomplish her mission. She silently prayed she wouldn't have to go _that_ far.

"Ten minutes exactly," Gin said, his lips barely moving. "If the scientist has not found you at Shinichi Kudo's house exactly ten minutes to the second after you prostrate yourself on the sidewalk, then I'm bringing you back into my car and you're going to wait there with me until he comes back to his house, mission or no mission."

It was quite an effort on her part not to groan in annoyance at him. He was being completely stupid and paranoid. She'd been through _much_ worse in the name of the Organization than risking a slight cold by standing out in the rain. Taking APTX-4869 just now came to mind. However, he _was_ compromising for her sake and at least it showed he cared for her. Gin was excellent at hiding his emotions when he chose to and sometimes it was hard to tell how deep his feelings for her truly ran.

So instead of scoffing at his worry, Sherry reached for his coat, being too short to reach his crossed arms, and tugged on it. He obliged her silent request and let his arms fall to his sides. She caught his left hand in her two small ones and held it against her face, smiling warmly up at him. "Thank you, Gin," she said. "I _do_ love you."

Some of the rigidity in his posture seemed to deflate with her words and he found himself back down on the ground kneeling before her. His smile was back and his eyes were soft once more. "Feeling sentimental, are you?" he teased.

"You're one to talk," she retorted, but there was neither bite nor bark to her words, just playful warmth.

In a spur of the moment decision, she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. It was a bittersweet moment, and he seemed to feel the same judging by the odd expression on his face. She still wanted to show her affection for him, but it somehow felt wrong to kiss him properly in this form now. It must be even worse for him. Gin looked no different to her except that he seemed bigger, but _she_ had regressed in age and size. She hoped she really _didn't_ have to remain undercover like this for too long, for _both_ their sakes.

"Well, there's no point delaying any longer, is there?" Sherry said briskly.

"No, I suppose not," Gin sighed and stood back up.

It was an incredibly little thing, but Gin had not let go of her hand when he stood up and still hadn't let go of it when they started walking. She experimentally gave little tugs on their clasped hands to see if he _would_ let go, but he didn't. If anything, he seemed to hold on to her hand even tighter. A warm glow seemed to spread through her and a light pink blush dusted her cheeks with this realization. Gin was being uncharacteristically clingy, worried about her health, and incredibly stubborn about not letting her begin her mission, but Sherry would be lying to herself if she didn't admit that she liked seeing Gin's composure break out of desperation to keep her safe by his side. She didn't need to hear him say 'I love you' in so many words to know how he felt, and she knew he would miss her just as much as she would miss him when they parted ways for good later that evening.

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 _I don't know how many chapters this fic will have since it's just an excuse for me to write an AU of one of my favorite ships. The next chapter will feature the Haido City Hotel reunion.  
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	2. Reunion With the Black Organization

**Author's Note: As promised, this chapter reflects episodes 176-178 with the same title as this chapter. Except for the actual reunion between Gin and Sherry, I didn't spend much time on the parts the anime already covered. This is still an AU.**

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Reunion With the Black Organization

A single snowflake fell in front of Gin's line of vision as he got out of his car and he glanced up at the cloudy gray sky. It was not the only one; the weather had been overcast all day and it seemed to finally make up its mind. A melancholy expression stole over his face as he watched the snow begin to fall more steadily. Snow always reminded him of Sherry.

It had snowed the first time he laid eyes on her when she was thirteen and he was picking her up from the airport after having just arrived from America…

It had been snowing just like this when he had first kissed her at fourteen in the middle of a bridge in one of Kyoto's silent, already snow-covered parks…

And it was during the winter's first snowfall in the dead of night that he gave in to both his desires and hers when she was fifteen and she entrusted him with herself entirely.

The snow reminded him all too keenly that she had chosen to be his in every sense of the word except the legal one, but only because she was too young to fill out a marriage registration form yet. And now she was back out of reach once more.

Gin hadn't seen or heard from Sherry for a couple months now, not since she had shrunk herself into a child to protect the Arquillian scientist, Hiroshi Agasa, and to ensure Shinich Kudo continued to believe the Black Organization was a crime syndicate. She had told him she would call him when it was safe to do so, but she _hadn't_ yet done so, and he had not realized how much of a hold that woman had over him until after she left. Most of the time, he was too busy with work to think too much about it, but then there were days like today when work was slow and the weather was behaving in a nostalgic manner. Given the time of day, elementary school must be nearly over now. How boring that must be for her. Had she noticed the snow falling through the classroom windows yet? Was it even snowing where Teitan Elementary resided? Did the snow remind her of him too or was he alone in his pining?

"Aniki?"

Gin startled out of his wistful thoughts and snapped around to look at his partner. Vodka was staring at him worriedly. "What?" he snapped, not caring how brusque he sounded.

"Nothing!" Vodka said quickly. "You were just… staring up at the sky for a while, that's all."

Gin grunted in acknowledgment, but refused to elaborate. "Come on, let's go and get this over with quickly," he said, locking his car and slamming the door shut.

He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and started walking across the road without waiting for Vodka. He was determined to get his work done and not think about Sherry or how much he missed her anymore today.

()()()()()

Well, not much more time was left in the day now. Gin just had to wait for confirmation that Pisco had either apprehended or eliminated the Adraxxi terrorist arriving at 6:00 at the Mourning Party taking place at the Haido City Hotel, and then this melancholy day would be over. He really wasn't acting like himself. All the footprints around his car had barely stirred any curiosity in him whatsoever and he had been readily inclined to put faith in Vodka's assumption that people had just been curious about it. His Porsche _was_ a classic vintage after all.

Gin had just gotten off the phone with Pisco when he saw something that made him pause. A single, very familiar, reddish-brown hair. It was not a common color, especially not in Japan, and he only knew of one person that had this color hair, but it couldn't possibly be her. There was no need for Sherry to break into his car, unless… it wasn't _Sherry_ , but someone or some _thing_ else…

Mind working fast, Gin quickly felt around the nooks and crannies of his seat until finally, his eyes caught a glint of shiny black metal that should not be there. From between the seat and the gear panel, Gin withdrew a small nob of black metal wrapped up in a sticky chewing gum-like substance.

"What is that thing?" Vodka asked, looking stunned despite the sunglasses that hid his eyes.

"It's probably a transmitter and receiver," Gin answered vaguely, turning the device over and over between his fingers.

There was no doubt about it; it was definitely alien technology, but unfortunately, it was such a miniscule and simple model that it bore none of the identifying hallmarks that would have indicated which alien species had most likely created it. Of course, creation of an artifact did not necessarily mean implementation, but it would have been something to work with. Regardless, this transmitter's presence confirmed his initial suspicion, and now that it had served its usefulness, he crushed it with ease. _Sherry_ , of course, had no need to break into his car and plant a transmitter, but an alien _disguising_ itself as Sherry would. Was it an ally of the Adraxxi's? It seemed likely and it was safe to assume it had overheard his conversation to Pisco. He'd have to inform him to keep an eye out for hostile alien allies, but he wasn't about to do so when there might be other bugs hidden in less conspicuous places in his car.

Gin turned off of the main road he was driving on and navigated his way down several narrow side streets to throw off any potential pursuers. Vodka seemed to have correctly guessed his intent and motivation because he remained quiet except for glancing at the mirrors and behind them as if to catch someone following them. If there _had_ been anyone, Gin was sure he'd thrown them off their trail by the time he parked his car and killed the engine.

"Vodka, start checking for any other transmitters that might have been attached to the car. There might have been only the one, but I want to be certain. I'll call Pisco to let him know we'll be late while you get started."

"Roger," Vodka agreed with an affirmative nod.

He popped open the glove compartment and pulled out the handheld bug detector while Gin made to get out of the car. It wasn't like normal bug detectors; this one was specifically designed with both alien technology and _biology_ in mind – sometimes the 'bugs' were literal. Gin stepped out into the wintry night air made even colder by the brisk wind that had picked up sometime after he'd started driving. As he dialed Pisco's number again, there was one thing he knew for certain. There was an alien out there pretending to be Sherry, _his_ Sherry, and there were a lot of ways for them to do so. There were the morphers – able to actually change their physical appearance, the illusionists – only capable of looking like another being and nothing more, the engineers – creating robotic replicas for their disguises, and then there were the skin-wearers – the ones who actually stripped a human of their skin and wrapped it around their body like a human onesie. This alien was not likely an illusionist because of the hair left behind, but that left three other disguise options, and if this was a skin-wearing alien… if some filthy, low-life, scumbag had killed Sherry and skinned her, then they had picked the _wrong_ fucking human to mess with!

()()()()()

That sound! From the chimney? Gin turned his head and listened intently, trying to discern what it was. Was it… breathing?

"In either case, we shouldn't stick around too long, Aniki," Vodka said, appearing not to have noticed Gin's lack of attention.

He glanced down at the ground and a frightful smirk spread across his face. "Hmph, indeed…" he said slowly and followed Vodka out of the wine storage room, closing the door behind him. "We're going up to the roof," he said as soon as they were out of earshot of the door.

"Eh? The roof? But why?" Vodka asked, hurrying to keep up with him because Gin had already set a quick pace to the stairs.

Gin's already frightening smirk turned downright feral. "Because I heard _Sherry_ breathing in that chimney," he said with dark amusement.

This seemed to only perplex Vodka further. "What, Sherry? But how would she fit? Isn't she-?"

"Yes, she is. _My_ Sherry is," Gin agreed. "But our alien friend doesn't know that and appears to be operating under the false delusion that I won't treat him harshly if he's wearing her face."

"So, it really is a skin-wearer?" Vodka said. Gin, too set on his goal of reaching the top of the stairs to the roof, didn't bother looking back, but the squeamish note in Vodka's voice was unmistakable. Gin couldn't blame him.

"No, the odds of it being a skin-wearer have just gone down drastically," Gin explained. "Sherry never made an antidote for her drug and only an adult would be able to brace themselves against the walls of that chimney. A skin-wearer wouldn't be able to accomplish such a task without ruining the skin disguise in the process. We're likely dealing with either a morpher or an engineer."

Vodka sighed in relief. "At least Sherry's not dead then," he said.

Yes, Gin had been thinking that exact same thing and was similarly relieved. Sherry was probably back at home with Dr. Agasa, safe in bed asleep, and none the wiser as to what was going on tonight.

They reached the top of the stairs at last and Gin motioned for Vodka to remain quiet. He cracked the door open a sliver and pressed his ear to the newly-made crack, listening. There… it was faint, but he could hear it: a woman's voice talking on the rooftop. Why Sherry's impersonator was speaking, he had no idea. If there was someone else up here or if they were calling for back-up, then this might get nasty real quick. He swung the door open all the way, careful not to make a sound, and saw that the imposter was the only one present and it was facing away from them. This was almost too perfect. He stepped back out into the snowy night, took aim at its right shoulder, and fired.

The bullet struck on target and red blood stained the snow below. So it was a morpher who had taken Sherry's form, unless this was a super-sophisticated robot that had blood stores to simulate open injuries. If it was the latter, it would explain why the imposter hadn't cried out in pain when he shot it. But then again, it could just be a morpher with high pain tolerance.

'Come on…' he thought mercilessly. 'Face me with those fake eyes of yours and see how little I care.'

As if obeying his unspoken command, the imposter spun around and stared at the two Men in Black agents in shock. "I've been waiting for you, _Sherry_ ," Gin said, laying heavy emphasis on the name and a predatory grin twisted his thin lips. How they would regret choosing _this_ form to impersonate.

()()()()()

Sherry stared in disbelief at the two men before her. When she had been shot, she had turned around expecting the Pisco impersonator or one of his allies, not Gin and Vodka with the former's gun raised to leave no room for doubt as to who'd shot her. She'd barely begun to process the fact that _Gin_ had _shot_ her when he spoke _._ He didn't ask how she'd managed to return to her adult form, didn't seem at all surprised to see her, and the vicious expression and tone with which he said her name stunned her into further silence. This… this couldn't be Gin, not _her_ Gin, could he? _Her_ Gin would not be staring at her with such cold-blooded hatred in his eyes and a gun trained on her forehead. Was this merely another one of Pisco's allies? Was that even Gin's car she and Kudo had infiltrated earlier? Was this whole assassination plot merely a ruse to lure her out of hiding?

"Look at it. Isn't it beautiful? The white snow that scatters amongst the darkness, and the fiery color of blood that decorates its surface. Those glasses and overalls you're wearing as a pathetic disguise don't suit you at all, but this is the perfect place for the death of a traitor, right _Sherry_?" Gin said, his green eyes boring into hers and she fought to suppress a shiver of horror.

It was wrong, so very wrong. He sounded exactly like Gin from the pitch of his voice to the rhythm of his speech. He'd even mastered the purring inflection that Gin so often used when he said her name, but he would never speak so affectionately of her death and blood amidst the snow that meant so much to them. Whoever was behind this disguise must have been studying Gin for a long time to mimic him so well, but he'd already given himself away as a fake by calling her a traitor. Those in the Organization who even knew she was gone were informed that her cover story was that of a traitor in hiding, and only the high-ranking staff like Gin knew otherwise. Of course, Gin would have known the truth anyway since he had been the only person present to witness her initial shrinking. The disguise was good, scarily good, but now she knew there was no way it was actually Gin.

()()()()()

"I'm surprised you guessed I would be coming out of this chimney," the imposter Sherry said.

Gin smirked and withdrew a single reddish-brown hair from his coat pocket. "It was this hair," he said smugly.

The imposter's eyes focused on it and widened in surprise, but didn't react beyond that. Did this scum understand yet how badly they'd underestimated him? Perhaps he should elaborate for them.

"I found it near the chimney, this reddish-brown hair of yours." It wasn't this _exact_ hair. This one was the one he'd found in his car and held on to, but there had been another one just like it right by the chimney. "I don't know if you were caught by Pisco or sneaked into that room when he wasn't there." Gin was feeling vindictive and dangerous, and he wanted this imposter to understand he was no weak human prey. He was a deadly predator, so he let that imminent danger ooze into his voice with his next words, "But I could hear it… from that chimney, your _quivering_ breathing…"

Still, the imposter didn't say a word and didn't react at all. Not even the eyes gave away if his words were affecting it. It was almost like he was speaking to Sherry herself, which was interesting. _Very_ interesting. Legal aliens and the more high-class criminal aliens learned how to pretend to be human well enough to get along in society, but an incredibly small number of them were so capable of being able to accurately _mimic_ another human being to this degree. They would have given themselves away long before now.

"I could have shot you in that dirty chimney, but I thought I could at least let your death flower bloom," Gin said, readjusting his gun's aim, making his intent clear.

Finally, a reaction, but not one he expected. Sherry's imposter smiled coldly at him and said, "I guess I should thank you for waiting for me in this cold."

Gin hid his unease behind a mocking smile. He had not expected that kind of response. Even with spies trying to infiltrate the Organization, his and Sherry's relationship had not been a public affair. Playing on the 'past relationship' card would have been a more obvious move if that had not been the case, but as far as he was aware, no-one except Sherry's dead sister, _his_ sister, Vodka, 'that person', Rum, and probably Vermouth, knew just how close his relationship with the woman was. It followed that no impersonator should realize this either and thus should not have responded the way this one did. A niggling of doubt wormed its way into his brain. The evidence he'd gathered so far against this Sherry imposter did not support this new idea, but he'd survived many previous hostile alien encounters by listening to his instincts without any logical reasoning to back them up, and he was not about to stop listening now. What if his initial guess back in his car had been wrong? What if it really was Sherry who had broken into his car and planted the transmitter? What if this wasn't an imposter at all, but Sherry herself, somehow regrown to her adult size? Well, if she _was_ , then he would give her the chance to come forward and explain herself.

"I'll ask you now while those lips can still move, about the trick you used to escape the gas chamber in the Organization. How did you manage it?" Gin asked and waited for her answer. If it was the real Sherry, she would know there had never been a gas chamber involved. Any other response would be a lie, and then he would know for certain what the truth was.

()()()()()

Gin had been quite talkative up until now and Sherry had been happy to let him do so while she tried to work out what she was going to do to get out of this. She had no weapons on her person, and though she was back in her adult body, she was too weak from both her cold and her climb to the roof to try and physically subdue the imposter. The last she had heard from Dr. Agasa, Kudo was coming to get her, but she had no idea how long he'd be and didn't want to rely on his assistance. The tranquilizer was a step in the right direction, but without the right weapons, Kudo was no match for an alien.

She had been so distracted by this and, except for the underlying cruelty in his voice, he sounded so much like Gin that she had spoken without thinking, as if it was really him when she had taunted him about waiting for her in the cold. Sherry hadn't caught herself in time to stop the words, but she didn't miss what happened next. Something had briefly shifted in his eyes then and the mocking smile that adorned his face in response seemed shrewder than before. She'd thought the fake Gin was already well-aware of how much he meant to her; wasn't that why he was speaking with such insincere affection? Had she miscalculated and given it away?

But then he posed the question about a gas chamber escape that hadn't happened and the ball was back in her court. Her brow furrowed in concentration, trying to make her sick-addled brain think. It was only further proof that this was an alien disguising as Gin and yet it bothered her that he was asking about it. Unlike during his other pauses when she had remained silent, he didn't seem keen to resume talking until she answered this question. Why? Why was this alien so interested in knowing what happened then? If this guy had been impersonating Gin for a while, he could not have done so before she shrunk and began her undercover assignment, so there was no reason for him to express such interest in the non-events that took place. Was he just asking to keep in-character? If it _had_ been true, Gin would definitely be plagued with curiosity until he solved the mystery, but this _wasn't Gin_ , no matter how much he looked and sounded like him. Unless he was? It was not an idea she was keen on, but if he thought _she_ was an alien imposter, then that would explain his behavior perfectly. Her slip-up might have clued him in that she could be the real thing and now he was asking for her to confirm her identity without making it too obvious in case he was wrong. But what if _she_ was wrong? If she confessed the truth about 'the trick', and this Gin was an alien in disguise, then she'd be killed anyway and her mission would result in failure. If it was just _her_ life on the line, then she might take that risk, but she wouldn't risk the lives of the other people her secret protected. What was she to do?

Gin decided he was done waiting.

He fired three shots, the noise muffled by the silencer. One struck her in the flesh of her left upper thigh just below her hip joint. Another embedded itself into her upper right arm just below the shoulder joint. The last didn't stick, but grazed blazing hot against her left cheek as it flew past. In the back of her mind through the haze of sickness, confusion, and pain, she recognized that these shots were intentionally non-lethal, but painfully immobilizing and she applauded Gin's high marksmanship ability (even if it wasn't really Gin). A person of lesser skill could not have pulled it off so quickly and effortlessly.

It was only her training that prevented her from making a sound when each bullet found its mark and she did not cry out when she collapsed against the snowy roof, part from pain and part from fatigue. These were warning shots and the message was clear. If she didn't answer Gin's question, then the next bullet was going straight through her head. She knew this, and yet she could not bring herself to answer. Sherry couldn't figure out if it was the real Gin or not, but she couldn't bring herself to take a chance either way. Even as a she trembled from pain and cold, a part of her hurt very deeply that she couldn't tell the difference. She couldn't keep her dignity or trust her judgment, so she resolved to maintain her silence. If she was going to die anyway, then she was not going to beg for mercy, but accept her fate and carry her secrets to the grave.

()()()()()

Shooting the would-be Sherry had been surprisingly easy. Watching her silent collapse without making a move to stop it had not been. His shots, though incapacitating, should not have caused that to happen. There was something more going on, but Sherry continued to remain stubbornly silent. The idea that this was an outrageously-skilled morpher and not the real Sherry was steadily losing traction with him, but he wasn't going to be hasty. Gin had given her the opportunity to verify herself and she was too smart a woman to not realize that he'd given her that chance if she was real, yet she hadn't taken it. Perhaps she thought that _he_ was an alien in disguise?

"Aniki, this woman won't talk," Vodka said quietly behind him. He'd nearly forgotten that he was there.

No, she wouldn't, even after shooting her. Still, he had one more trick he could use to force her to reveal herself. One that was sure to get the proper reaction from her if she was real, and especially if she believed he was an alien imposter.

"I guess there's nothing we can do," he said with a hapless shrug and re-aimed his gun at her head. Now for the moment of truth. "Let's send her to her sister, who we sent first."

Pure, absolute hatred instantly filled those pretty blue eyes of hers and she glared at him from where she lay prone on the ground, but still… furious as she looked, silent she remained. It was a very encouraging response, but he thought her reaction would be more emotional, considering how upset she'd been when she found out Akemi had been killed and impersonated. Stoic to the end was her decision then, no matter how much he goaded her? Well, he could easily test the extent of her resolve. Gin started to slowly pull on the trigger, feeling the increasing resistance and weight… watching… waiting… no reaction, no fear, just resolution. His eyebrows rose slightly. She was…

Out of nowhere, a sharp pinprick of pain stung his upper right arm and distracted him. He quickly glanced at what caused it and saw a tiny toothpick-sized dart sticking through his coat sleeve right before it disintegrated.

'A needle?' he wondered briefly and then he felt it.

From where the needle had struck, his arm started going numb and the effects of whatever drug that needle carried were spreading fast. His skin was starting to feel tingly all over and already he was starting to feel light-headed and dizzy. Bewildered, he sank to his knees clutching his arm where he'd been struck, trying to clear his head enough to figure out what happened, his mind racing. His training in the Organization had included constant exposure to various toxins and drugs of both human and alien origin at increasingly higher dosages to build his immunity. What the hell had he been hit with?! This drug was working exceptionally fast despite his high tolerance and he was forced to concede that was probably the only reason he hadn't already succumbed to this drug's effects. His hearing and his vision were starting to waver now too; Vodka looked like a blurry figure and his worried voice sounded oddly distorted next to him.

Then he heard a new voice call out into the night sky from somewhere behind him, shouting something about a chimney.

Vodka was shouting now and then his gun went off, but that other voice still rang. Someone was behind them, but Vodka missed and they were still alive. And in front of him, he saw movement in the form of a bluish human-shaped blur. Sherry. She was crawling toward what had to be the chimney. She was leaving. She was getting away. Gin couldn't do anything to get Vodka's attention, not even talk. It was taking everything he had just to keep awake and fight whatever was trying to drag him under, nevermind reason out if it was a poison or a sedative he'd been injected with. The numbness had spread all down his right arm and was reaching into his chest now.

A shot flew towards Sherry, but missed and she tumbled out of sight immediately after. She'd gone down the chimney, helped by that unknown man behind them. The thought infuriated him and his vision darkened considerably for a brief moment. It was still too blurry, he couldn't hear properly, and moving at all was an increasingly-difficult chore. Despite all of that, this didn't feel like a poison. He wasn't in any pain, sweating, short of breath, or having heart palpitations on top of his other symptoms. It felt like a sedative if anything, a very powerful sedative that should have put a normal man to sleep in mere seconds. No human sedative in existence was that fast-acting since they relied on passive circulation of the drugs through the system. No, this was an alien concoction and _alien_ sedatives relied heavily on the initial point of entry as a means to actively produce the desired effect until the drug's target was asleep. Holding onto that thought like a lifeline, Gin forced himself to move and pressed the barrel of the gun to his arm opposite of where the needle had struck him. Without a moment's hesitation, he squeezed the trigger. Pain and sudden clarity overwhelmed his senses as his arm burned and blood spewed out. His only reaction had been the brief grunt through his clenched teeth.

Already, he could feel the effects of the sedative waning and with his mental faculties no longer compromised, his thoughts were coming to him very quickly. Right before he'd been shot with the sedative, he had concluded that it was the real Sherry, somehow grown again, that had been up here on the roof and she must have thought him a fake. That meant the sedative had to be from the Arquilian scientist she was living with and that it was Kudo who'd hit him from behind, no doubt trying to protect Sherry from _him_. But if the two were both here, how and why had they been separated? Kudo firmly believed the Organization was a secret crime syndicate, but Sherry shouldn't have been removed from his presence. Pisco… It had to have been Pisco. He had told him someone who looked like Sherry would be coming, but that had been with the assumption she would be in her adult form. If she was with Kudo, then she definitely wasn't an adult, and Pisco would have realized the truth and not interfered with her. But he _had_ interfered and that meant only one thing in their line of work. _Pisco_ wasn't Pisco, and Sherry had fallen down the chimney back into that room the alien had left her in. Despite the convoluted nature of the subject, Gin reached this conclusion in a matter of mere seconds. He stood up quickly, already feeling his strength return despite the blood he was still losing out of his arm, and stalked over to the chimney.

"Aniki, what are you doing?" Vodka asked. He had no way of knowing the complicated thought processes that had just taken place inside Gin's head.

"That Sherry was the real one and Pisco left her in that room to either kill her or try and get to the Organization," Gin explained without actually explaining anything at all. He climbed into the chimney and held onto the ledge as he placed his feet sideways against two of the opposing walls.

"Sherry? Pisco? Wait, Aniki, what do you want me to do?" Vodka said, still very bewildered.

"Stay there until I climb back up," he snapped without looking at his partner and started sliding down spread-eagled bracing against the chimney's walls. It was slower, but he was not keen on dropping to the ground like a rock the way Sherry must have when she fell.

Gin felt and smelled the fire long before he saw it and he dropped to the ground once he was at a safe enough height to do so. Glass crunched underneath his shoes when he landed and he bent his knees to absorb the full impact of the blow. He'd landed on the glasses Sherry had been wearing that were undoubtedly Kudo's and tricked out with some alien tech. Putting that aside, the first thing he saw looking out of the chimney was Pisco's black suit standing before him. That old, wrinkled face peered into the chimney, obviously having heard him land, and Gin greeted him first with the barrel of his gun. Nothing pleased Gin more in that moment than to see the shock on his face then morph into terror as he stepped out of chimney and Pisco saw who was waiting for him at the other end. Oh yes, this fake _should_ be scared to see him. He would find out if the real Pisco had been killed or captured later, but he would deal with this scum first; this scum who had learned of Sherry's secret and been intending to harm her. He would not be surprised if this alien was a partner of the Adraxxi terrorist and had only followed through with the plan to subdue him in order to shut him up forever. He couldn't confirm it because odds were good those glasses of Kudo's might have the ability to transmit every word he said back to its owner.

"It looks like you messed up, _Pisco_ …" Gin said with haughty amusement. Even with the hot red flames burning everything around them, he was going to savor every precious second he had of this moment before he had to leave.

()()()()()

While Dr. Agasa fussed over her injuries and Kudo was consumed by the recent encounter with the Black Organization, Haibara found her thoughts consumed by only one thing from the whole affair. Gin… seeing and hearing him again after so long had renewed anew the keen sense of longing she had been struggling to bury ever since she left him. She'd promised she'd contact him when it was safe for her to do so, but hadn't done so once, afraid that she would end up contacting him too much and he would get fed up with her acting like a clingy child. Still, she wanted to believe that it was really him and not some alien, both because she didn't want to think there was anything out there clever enough to bring him down and… because she missed him, plain and simple. She never had been able to figure out if it was him on the rooftop and that bothered her immensely. She had not been able to do anything about it in the aftermath though. So, if she seemed more downcast to Kudo and Dr. Agasa, they likely attributed it to her narrow escape from those who were supposedly hunting her and did not question it.

As such, she did not get her chance until nearly a week after the event had occurred and the furor from her companions had died down to manageable levels. Dr. Agasa would not betray her secret to Kudo, of course, but she did not want to give him any more reason to lie to the boy he had watched grow up and was subsequently fond of. So, once he had fallen asleep for the night, Haibara quietly got out of bed and removed the wireless phone from the jack, carrying it with her to the front of the house near the large windows. It wasn't snowing anymore, but it lay several inches deep, covering everything in beautiful, pristine whiteness. She dialed a number she knew by heart and waited with baited breath.

" _Sherry? Is that you?"_ the achingly familiar voice answered over the line, and her heart swelled with longing. He sounded so surprised that she had called him.

"Yes, Gin, it's me. It's safe," she reassured him, feeling herself smile in spite of herself. "But before I go on, what was my final request of you?"

She could have sworn he was smiling right now too. _"You made me promise to wait for you and not die before you finally return home,"_ he said softly.

"Correct," she said brightly now that she knew for certain he was the real deal. "It's good to hear you after so long."

" _I thought you would have called me sooner than now…"_ he said, trailing off. Did she imagine the bitterness in his tone?

"I wanted to," Haibara admitted quietly. "I got into some trouble recently and was injured as a result. Dr. Agasa and Kudo have only just stopped worrying themselves over me."

There was nothing but heavy silence on the other end for a while before Gin finally spoke up again, sounding unusually hesitant. _"Sherry… I was the one who shot you on the Haido City Hotel rooftop."_

She had known that was a possibility… that he had been the one who shot at her, even though she had still hoped he was the real Gin. "You knew it was me then?" she asked, her voice sounding unnaturally high.

" _No, the thought didn't even cross my mind until you taunted me about waiting for you in the cold. Only four or five living people should know how close our relationship really is, thus an imposter shouldn't have known to try and flirt with me. Even then, I wasn't certain it was you until right at the very end just before your tiny protector shot me with an extremely powerful sedative."_

"It was the wristwatch," Haibara said automatically.

" _The_ _ **what**_ _?"_

"Dr. Agasa invented a stun gun wristwatch for Kudo that he usually uses to put Kogoro Mouri to sleep in order to solve cases with his own brain without drawing attention to himself as a survivor of APTX-4869," Haibara explained. "Mouri's famous reputation as the Sleeping Sleuth is all because of Kudo."

" _Well, that_ _ **wristwatch**_ _of his would have completely incapacitated me if I wasn't a glutton for punishment during the Organization's training,"_ Gin grumbled. _"Any other special gadgets I should be aware of that might get in the way?"_

"Well, he's got some special sneakers that are designed to stimulate the muscles and nerves in his feet in order to give him back the full-powered kick of a high school student," Haibara began with an amused smile. "And his glasses have a built-in tracking mechanism, a detachable transmitter, and the frames act as a receiver directing conversations around the transmitter directly to his ears."

" _So, I was right about the glasses after all,"_ Gin said with what she imagined was a triumphant smirk on his face. _"You're fortunate I noticed them and guessed their function when I jumped down the chimney after you to take care of Pisco before he got to you first."_

Haibara's heart leapt in her throat. "You figured it out that fast?" she exclaimed. "But how? You had nothing to go on."

" _Not true. I made the realization after I finally stopped the sedative from putting me to sleep. By that time, I knew you weren't an alien and that you were with Kudo. Pisco would not have taken you from Shinichi Kudo's company if he was who he claimed, so I knew it was him then,"_ Gin said, still sounding oh-so smug. He was like Kudo in that way, fond of showing off his impressive deductive reasoning abilities to his girl. _"If it's of interest to you, I did look for the real Pisco after we got out of the hotel in order to figure out what happened to him."_

"And? Did you find him?" she asked, worried what she might learn.

" _Oh, we found him alright,"_ Gin said bitterly. _"All across five rooms and two different levels in his own home. The only reason we even knew it was him was because his decapitated head was ironically the only thing untouched. We're not even sure if all the pieces were present, but since nobody else lived there, we decided to burn the place down. Easier clean-up that way and maybe a funeral pyre will be enough to lay his soul to rest. God knows his death didn't give him that. Whoever killed him either had a deep-seated hatred for him or just liked to play with their food."_

"Gin, that's horrible!" Haibara exclaimed, horrified at what had happened to the old man. Such a horrible, violent way to die!

" _You know how some of these aliens are, Sherry. Despite Earth being the Casablanca of the galaxy, many of them don't view humans as anything more than a food source. So, because the fake Pisco kidnapped you in the first place, I suppose it wasn't too much of a stretch for you to assume that I was also an alien in disguise and in league with him when I confronted you on the roof?"_ Gin asked.

"No, it wasn't, but it didn't help that the first thing you did was shoot me in the shoulder to get my attention, and you weren't surprised that I wasn't a child anymore," Haibara huffed in annoyance.

" _That was part of why I was convinced you_ _ **couldn't**_ _be the real Sherry,"_ Gin said with an apologetic note in his voice. _"I didn't realize you'd already started working on an antidote to the shrinking process."_

Haibara shook her head. "I haven't. Kudo told me to drink some Chinese baijiu in order to escape the room by chimney. He didn't tell me what it would do, much less that I would return to my adult form. I'm guessing he had a similar experience with the liquor before I met him."

" _I see. So, how have you been?"_ Gin asked. _"I haven't heard from you in months and I can't help but feel that if we hadn't met the way we did a week ago, your silence would have continued."_

"I've been…" Haibara began, but her throat seemed to close of her own accord and swallow the word 'fine' that she wanted to say. "I've been…" she tried again, but she still couldn't say it. She hung her head low and stared blankly at the snow-covered ground beyond the frosty windows. "I've missed you," she said quietly, unbidden tears coming to her eyes as she finally admitted this painful truth to the one remaining person alive who knew her and loved her most. "I've been wanting to see you for over a month now and I felt that if I called and talked to you, I'd only miss you even more and want to see you again, so I talked myself out of it over and over again. It's lonely here. I like the kids, but it's hard only being able to have adult conversations with two people, one of which doesn't know the truth behind my work and the other who does is so far removed from it the alien community, I can't even properly discuss it with him."

" _Sherry, love, you need to call me_ _ **more**_ _if you're feeling like that, not less,"_ Gin sighed. _"You're not going to feel any_ _ **less**_ _disconnected if you choose to shut me out. Don't think you're the only one who's been feeling lonely, Sherry. Only you didn't allow me the_ _ **option**_ _to call you whenever I want. I could have wished for better circumstances, but I was happy to see you last week once I realized it was actually you."_

Haibara's grip on the phone tightened briefly and she bit her lip in indecision. "Where are you right now?" she asked in a barely audible whisper.

"… _I'm in Beika,"_ he said with a resigned air.

Haibara's brow furrowed. "You're in Beika? In Tokyo? Right now?"

" _Yes. I've been holding up in the area for about a week now."_

Ever since the rooftop reunion was what he truly meant. "Gin, that's dangerous; what if Kudo had spotted you or your car? You don't exactly blend in," she scolded.

"So w _hy are you asking where I am at the moment?"_ he asked, completely ignoring her warning. Haibara's mouth snapped shut. _"Maybe I was hoping to see you again just as much as you were, Sherry,"_ he said gently.

Haibara swallowed hard and gave a stiff nod. "Yes. I want to see you, Gin."

" _I'll be there in ten minutes."_

"Right. Just be careful no one important sees you. You're not supposed to know where I live after all."

Gin chuckled. _"Woman, if anyone sees me that shouldn't, I'll just neuralyze them and make them forget what they saw."_

The corner of her mouth twitched upward. "Right, you have that thing. Take care then."

" _I will. I'll see you soon, Sherry."_ With those parting words spoken, Gin hung up.

Haibara hung up too and returned to the table where the phone jack resided to put the phone back. She wouldn't be needing it again tonight. Afterward, she resumed her place by the window overlooking the front yard and the street beyond, keeping a lookout for both suspicious characters and Gin's own car. She felt oddly disassociated from herself right now. Ordinarily in this kind of situation, she would have berated Gin for being so unusually reckless and refused to see him out of spite if nothing else, yet she couldn't care less at the moment. Nothing mattered more to her than seeing him in the flesh without a gun between them.

Time seemed to drag on forever and there was nothing to look at out there in the street. It was so late that no normal people were awake at this time, but she resisted the urge to look at the clock and find out just how much time had passed anyway. Gin would not be late; he was nothing if not punctual unless he suspected a trap. She would wait... And wait... And wait... A beam of white light split the night along the street and Haibara sat up a little straighter. Could it be…? The light beam became larger and brighter until the source finally came into view in the form of headlights attached to a familiar, classic black Porsche 356A. The car stopped at the curb right in front of Dr. Agasa's gate and the headlights cut out. The car had been turned off. The car door opened and the driver stepped out. Tall, clad in black, and with long silvery-blond hair, he leaned against his car and stared expectantly at the house he'd parked in front of.

Haibara could not think of any time recently when she had smiled as genuinely as she did now and she could not run to the front door fast enough. She fruitlessly tried to yank the door open for a few seconds before realizing she hadn't unlocked it yet. Glaring at it for delaying her, she turned the deadbolt, removed the chain, and flung the front door wide open.

"Gin!" she shouted and ran down the walkway without giving him time to acknowledge her presence.

He dropped to his knees just as she burst through the front gate and flung herself into his arms. They engulfed her much smaller frame instantly and she tightened her hold around his neck. Any awkwardness she might have felt about being held like a child by her lover was wiped from her mind in an instant. Gin was here, really and tangibly _here_. Her senses were overwhelmed by the sudden invasion of everything that was him: the fine smoothness of his hair beneath her fingers, the sharp smell of leather from his coat mixed with the pungent odor of cigarette smoke, the penetrating warmth and strength of his embrace, and the loving, purring rhythm with which he murmured her name in his deep voice. She was so happy to see him, hear him, feel him, smell him, it actually hurt, and she was sure she must be crying. Haibara felt his arms loosen and momentary panic gripped her, making her desperately clutch at him. No, it was too quick; he couldn't be leaving her so soon!

She heard his low chuckle in her ear and felt his chest vibrate with his laughter. " _Easy_ Sherry, I just want to see those pretty blue eyes of yours," he said reassuringly.

Haibara blushed in embarrassment and allowed him to pull back to look at her properly. It seemed incredible to her that with everything else that had transpired in her life so far in such a criminally-short period of time, Gin had somehow remained unchanged through all of it. His green eyes roved intently all over her face, taking in every little detail just like they had done when he had first seen her in this shrunken appearance.

"Still not used to it?" she teased.

"You wouldn't be either if it was me," Gin retorted, still not taking his eyes off her.

Haibara grinned in spite of herself. "I would _love_ to see that. The Organization's best, most-intimidating and highly-effective law enforcer turned pint-sized ankle-biter. I bet you would be an adorable-looking kid too; very feminine with the long hair."

"As much as I prefer seeing you happy, I'm not about to make a fool of myself by shrinking into a kid just because it would amuse you," he said.

"Oh? Not even if I started falling in love with someone else?" she baited.

Gin scowled. "No," he said shortly.

Haibara gave an exaggerated sigh. "Darn. That would have been some excellent blackmail material."

"Well, if I was a cruel person, I'd be using these tears of yours as blackmail," Gin said rather quietly and the playful air turned somber instantly. He cupped her cheeks with both hands and wiped away the remains of her tears with his thumbs. "It's not healthy for you to be crying like this over me," he told her and he leaned forward, kissing her forehead.

Haibara quickly caught handfuls of his hair near his neck, preventing him from pulling away. "You missed," she said sternly.

Gin raised an eyebrow, looking skeptical. "I missed?"

She nodded. "Yes, you did."

And before he could stop her, Haibara used her leverage on his hair to lean up and kiss him properly on the mouth. Gin did not respond immediately to her soft entreaty, but eventually he gave in and she only let go of his hair once he was holding her as tightly as before. She did not care anymore how wrong this would undoubtedly look to an outsider – a grown man kissing a little girl young enough to be his daughter in a non-platonic way – because she was an eighteen-year-old woman, and she needed to remind herself of that. She had thought that kissing him with her child's body would have been awkward, but it wasn't surprisingly. It was only her body that had changed, not her mind or emotions. Kissing Gin in her shrunken form was exactly the same as kissing him in her adult form. When Haibara was satisfied that she'd both had her fill and made her point, she pulled away and Gin did not pursue further contact, though he didn't release her from his arms either.

He slowly opened his eyes and as soon as they met hers, he sighed heavily. "You still feel and respond like Sherry when I kiss you, but I feel like a pedophile when I think of kissing you while you still look like this."

"Well, I could start working on an antidote that will counter the effects of the drug and return me to my normal size for the next time we have another clandestine meeting," Haibara said with a teasing smile.

"Please do," Gin said, completely serious.

Haibara's smile faded a little. He knew she'd been joking when she said it, yet there was no sign of humor in his eyes at all. This really upset him.

"Okay, I will," she said quietly and it pleased her to see Gin's eyes widen in shock. He was very rarely surprised by anything. "For Kudo's sake, I won't be trying too hard, but thanks to that baijiu, I now have something to work on without you providing me a copy of the current drug data and him accidentally stumbling upon it. I imagine it won't be long anyway before he finds himself in a situation where he has to prove to others that Conan Edogawa is _not_ Shinichi Kudo. Having even a temporary antidote on hand will be helpful for that."

Gin frowned in annoyance. "Kudo again. Everything you've done recently seems to be centered around Shinichi Kudo."

Haibara gave him a deadpan glare. "He's my job, so of course I have to focus on him the same way I would focus on any other assignment. There's no need to be jealous."

"I'm not," he said through gritted teeth.

She raised an eyebrow. "Not even _trying_ to hide that you're lying? That's new," she said coolly.

His expression contorted briefly into a silent snarl before he could smooth it over. "You see each other every day and he protects you without a second thought – protects you from _me_ – though he hardly knows you, and he's your age both chronologically and biologically, so _forgive me_ if I feel threatened by him," Gin said, his tone full of bitter resentment.

Haibara could not believe she was having this conversation with him. Gin was jealous. Over nothing, but he was jealous of her _work subject_ of _two_ _months_. What kind of woman did he think she was?! She did not want to argue with him after finally being back in his arms for the first time in months, but she was not about to let that stand either.

"Let's get this straight right now," Haibara said sharply. "One, Kudo is already hopelessly in love with his childhood friend and I am _not_ the kind of woman who would throw myself at a man who only has eyes for another, nor would I pursue one who has already been claimed."

She gave Gin a meaningful look at this. She had never met the woman known as Vermouth who had been her rival for Gin's affection, but she'd heard rumors that Vermouth hated her because of it and still flirted wantonly with Gin on a semi-regular basis.

She continued, "Two, do you honestly believe that my love for you can so easily be replaced by another?"

Gin did not answer her immediately, but she held his gaze and the irritated anger seemed to drain out of him. He stretched his left hand toward her and carefully stroked his long fingers through her short, reddish-brown hair. He wore a far-away expression on his face as he did so.

"No…" he said at last. "You wouldn't betray me like that, Shiho."

The words ready on her tongue died instantly and her eyes widened in awe. He very rarely called her by her given name and never did so in a public setting.

"Gin, you keep that up and I'm going to start crying all over again," she said with an attempt at her normal teasing tone, but her voice sounded too high and strained.

Gin's eyes lit up and his faint smile returned. "Well that's no good. I'll be sure to refrain from using it until the next time I see you back to your normal self and can kiss you without restraint."

Haibara released a sigh and leaned back against his warm chest, gripping the front of his black coat with her small hands and listening to his heartbeat. "I promise to do better about calling you this time around," she said. "But the next time I see you, it will be when I'm my adult self again."

Gin stiffened as if shocked by an electric current. "What are you saying right now?"

Haibara smiled and nuzzled deeper into his coat. "I told you earlier, didn't I? I'm going to start working on an antidote to the shrinking drug. I doubt I will make a complete antidote on the first try, but if my first prototype works, then I'll be back to my adult body and you can, as you put it, 'kiss me without restraint', because the first thing I'm going to want to do is see you and make up for the lost time."

"I'll wait for you, Sherry," he vowed once more.

"I know you will," she said, and then mentally added, 'You and Ran both.'

* * *

 _I did not intend it when I first wrote the ending to this chapter, but I accidentally set it up to lead right into shortly before the Desperate Revival set of episodes takes place._


	3. Desperate Revival: Part 1

**Author's Note: I don't know how this chapter got this long. I seriously don't. It. just. wouldn't. stop! It was so long, I even had to break it up into two parts. Also, Gin and Sherry did not play nice and decided to hijack the last 800 or so words without my consent. As a result, there's some unexpected smut at the very end of this chapter (which is shocking to me because I have to be in a certain mood to write smut at all, and I did NOT realize I was in that mood until I was writing it). It's not all that graphic, but it's definitely not 'T' rating-worthy.**

 **I left a very visible warning just before the scene starts getting more graphic so that those who do not wish to read it can just ignore it. It is literally the very last thing that happens in this chapter and you don't miss out on anything by NOT reading it.**

 **Despite the name, the next two chapters actually take place before the "Desperate Revival" episodes (188-193).**

* * *

Desperate Revival: Part 1

' _This is it…'_ Haibara thought as she held the white capsule up to eye level.

She had been working on it for weeks, and finally, she would see if her hard work had paid off. It had technically been finished yesterday evening, but as it had been a school night, she hadn't been able to do anything with it. Now however, tomorrow was Sunday and there were currently no plans in place with the rest of the kids. If something happened, and they came by if she wasn't around, then Dr. Agasa would just claim she was too sick to play. It wasn't too far-fetched, she already had a mild head cold. She prayed this would work.

Her face set, Haibara clenched the capsule in her fist and set about gathering the clothes that she'd worn when she first arrived at Dr. Agasa's house. They were the only adult-sized clothes that she had at the moment. She carried them with her into the bathroom and undressed, exchanging her child clothes for the adult ones. She was skeptical that anything would even happen, much less the effect she wanted, but just in case, she didn't want to ruin her child clothes because she was a pessimist.

' _Well, here goes nothing,"_ she thought and dry-swallowed the capsule just like she had done with APTX-4869.

Just as before, she counted five seconds of no effects, and then the unforgettable pain exploded through her. Her mouth flew open in a silent scream, but she fought to prevent any sound from escaping. Another body-wracking spasm had her writhing on the floor, and still she kept her silence. The rhythmic violent spasms pulsated fast and furious and she was hardly aware of anything beyond the blinding pain! It was not the same bone-melting feeling when she shrunk, but instead it was the tight, suffocating feeling of being trapped in far-too-small a space and the awful stretching sensation all over akin to that of torn muscles in sports injuries.

At last… at long last, the final shuddering tremors ceased and Shiho Miyano lay panting heavily on the cool tile of the bathroom floor. Her nerves still tingled uncomfortably, but when she was finally able to gather her thoughts, Shiho lifted her hand in front of her face and it was not a child's hand that she saw. Her scarlet red dress didn't feel so uncomfortably large on her either. Still, she wasn't quite ready to believe it. She had spent the better part of a year developing that shrinking drug and it was difficult to accept that she had successfully created an antidote on her first try. She sat up shakily and grabbed a hold of the bathroom sink. Bracing herself against it, she pulled herself up to her feet and looked in the mirror. Sure enough, it was the eighteen-year-old genius scientist of the Organization, Shiho Miyano codenamed Sherry that gazed back at her.

The excitement she'd been fighting down suddenly flooded through her and a truly brilliant smile lit up her face. With only one thought in her mind, she flung the bathroom door open, ignored Dr. Agasa's shocked exclamation at seeing her full-grown, and snatched up the phone. She quickly punched in a set of numbers and held the phone to her ear, tense with anticipation.

The voice she was hoping to hear answered almost immediately. _"Sherry, it's been a while. I suppose you had some time to spare?"_ Gin said, sounding just as pleased as she felt.

"Never mind that right now," Sherry said brusquely. " _Please_ tell me you don't have anything going on tonight or tomorrow? Or at least anything that can't be rescheduled for later?"

She could easily imagine the bewilderment playing out on his face before he spoke again. _"Why tomorrow? And your voice- Wait…! Sherry, did you…?!"_

Sherry smirked widely. "I did. I don't know how long this will last, but I intend to spend all of the time I have with you, just as I promised."

" _I can be there in an hour. Do you need me to bring anything?"_

"Just a coat of some kind, and I don't care if it's a spare one of yours either. I only have my lab coat from when I first arrived and I'd rather not advertise that I'm a scientist while I'm out," she said.

" _I'll be bringing Vodka along with me; he's missed you too. Is that a problem?"_

Sherry shook her head automatically before realizing Gin couldn't see her. "No, it's fine. It'll be nice to see him too. Since it will still be daylight when you arrive, you can park at the end of road where you first dropped me off and I'll meet you there."

" _At least it's not raining this time,"_ Gin muttered darkly.

"No, but it's a pity there's no snow to celebrate our reunion either," she said warmly.

" _True. I'll see you soon, Sherry."_

"Yup. Drive safe," she said and hung up, a giddy smile on her face.

"Ai…?"

Oh, right. Sherry turned to face the awestruck professor and cocked her head at him. "Yes, Professor?"

"You're… you're back to normal… How…?" Dr. Agasa stammered.

"I've been working on an antidote to the shrinking effect of the drug that Kudo and I took ever since the incident at Haido City Hotel," Sherry explained. Her new smile seemed to be permanently stuck on her face.

"W-wait a moment; does that mean you're leaving?" he asked, a note of panic in his voice.

"Not permanently, if that's what you're asking. The antidote I just took is only a prototype, so this effect will probably only be temporary. Besides, it's still too dangerous to leave you without protection. However, when I originally shared this plan of mine with my lover, I promised that when I was successful, I would spend the entire time with him, seeing as he's been patiently waiting for me for so long," Sherry said.

"Your lover? I didn't know you had one," Dr. Agasa said.

"And that's as much as you're allowed to know," Sherry said with a warning edge. "Of course, it goes without saying that Kudo can't be told even _that_ much. With that mind of his, he might even be able to guess who he is, and if he found out I was still seeing him, it could put the Organization's _true_ secret at risk."

Yes, Kudo finding out that she was still seeing the man who'd supposedly attempted to kill him in the first place might put a bit of a damper on their relationship.

She started making her way back to the bathroom to gather the rest of her clothes. "My lover will be here in an hour, so for your own safety, don't see me out when I leave the house. I'll be bringing some of my child clothes with me for whenever I shrink back, but I don't know when that will happen. Unless you've secretly invited the Junior Detective League without my knowledge, I don't expect them or Kudo to show up tomorrow, but if they do, you are to tell them that my cold worsened and I am in no state to do anything more than sleep. Since I have a bit of a head cold right now, this is a reasonable excuse. If I'm not back by tomorrow night, then call the school on Monday morning and tell them I'm staying home sick, though I don't expect the effects to last _that_ long."

"Oi, if you're not back at school on Monday, that might turn the kids away, but what about Shinichi? He might assume something more is going on and if he finds you not here, he'll be concerned," Dr. Agasa pointed out.

"Hmph. He'll be more suspicious than concerned," Sherry scoffed. "If he pops over without calling you, then make sure my bedroom door is closed and that everything is set up as if a sick person is really inside… Actually, I should just do that myself before I leave, so you don't have to worry about it. My point is, you will have to do your best to convince him I'm just very sick and contagious and that there really is nothing going on."

"Will that be enough to convince him?" Dr. Agasa asked.

Sherry sighed heavily as she stood up, her clothes in her arms. "Hopefully it won't come to such drastic measures and I'll be back for school on Monday with no one the wiser to my activities. But if all my prep work doesn't convince him to leave me alone, then he'll discover I'm missing, get suspicious, and I'll neuralyze him to make him forget those suspicions."

"Just be careful, Ai," Dr. Agasa said in a worried voice.

Sherry turned to the professor and smiled reassuringly at him. "You don't need to worry about me. Where I'm going, I couldn't possibly be in safer hands."

()()()()()

When you're waiting for something good to happen, time seems to drag its heels and crawl out of spite. That was exactly how Sherry felt as she waited impatiently for the hour to pass by. At five 'til, she gave in to her bottled-up frustration and left the house with a bag of clothes over her shoulder to stand and wait outside the gate. A blast of cool air shot through her as soon as she opened the front door and she shivered violently. Her dress had sleeves yes, but that was hardly enough to keep the wind away. Determined not to go back inside, she crossed her arms tight over her chest in a vain attempt to retain warmth and walked out to the front gate. As soon as she saw Gin's car, she would be gone. She stepped past the metal gates and peered down both ends of the sidewalk. She had not expected anyone and this wasn't usually a busy street anyway, but it never hurt to be cautious. Sherry closed Dr. Agasa's front gate behind her and leaned against the concrete wall that made up part of his fenced-in yard.

While she continued to wait, Sherry let her thoughts wander back to the man who was coming for her. She had been thinking about him so much as of late, it was a wonder that Kudo hadn't noticed how preoccupied she was, but she didn't care about that right now. Her lover was coming and she was both excited and anxious. The last time they had met had been during a brief late-night interlude shortly after the reunion on the Haido City Hotel rooftop, an event which seemed so long ago now. Over the phone, he seemed just as excited to see her as she was, but still she worried. She could not pinpoint what, but she knew her new life as Ai Haibara was changing her. Would he notice? Would he be okay with the changes? And how had he changed during her absence? _Had_ he changed? And would _she_ be okay with those changes if he had? These useless thoughts plagued her and she wished Gin would hurry up. His mere presence would be far more effective at banishing such doubts than sheer willpower.

A blast from a car horn off to her left made her jump and she snapped her head around. Her eyes landed on the car and her jaw dropped. It was a black Porsche parked at the far end of the street. Both driver and passenger doors opened and two men dressed in black stepped out, staring at her. Her smile returned, wide and bright, and she took off at a run down the concrete sidewalk. The cold was forgotten. Her doubts were forgotten. They had come, they were here, and they were just within reach!

Vodka had been sitting in the passenger seat, so she reached him first. "Vodka, I missed you!" she said as she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly.

Vodka returned the hug and then pulled back to give her a bemused look. "Is this same smiling, happy young lady really our Sherry?"

Not deterred in the slightest, Sherry gave him a sinister smirk, "Oh, don't worry. I still have plenty of dry wit and sarcasm left to cut you down while I'm in your company."

Vodka laughed and lifted her into the air, spinning her once in a tight circle. "There we go! _That's_ the Sherry we know and love!"

Once he set her down on her feet again, he released her. Sherry only had a brief moment to reorient herself before she felt a hand on her wrist and was spun right around into Gin's waiting arms. She found herself gazing intently up into those forest green eyes of his that were not obscured by his bangs for once. His strong arms held her safe and secure from the world, the weather, and her own pessimistic mind. Sherry could feel her heart still beating frantically in her chest from her excitement, yet she was certain she had never felt calmer in all her life.

"Welcome back, Sherry," he murmured. He didn't need to say more; the wide, warm smile on his face said it all.

Sherry was oddly frustrated. She had so much she wanted to say to him. 'Thank you for coming so quickly'. 'Sorry for taking so long to make an antidote'. 'Please forgive me for making you wait'. 'I still love you'. Yet all of them felt woefully inadequate to express all that he meant to her. There was… one way though… Sherry slid her hands up Gin's chest to his broad shoulders and pulled on them, closing her eyes and leaning up… leaning in… She never reached her destination though. Gin's hands fell heavily upon her shoulders and kept her feet firmly planted on the ground, unable to either move up or bring him down to her level.

Confused and hurt, she opened her eyes and saw him staring down at her with a pained expression. He shook his head slowly. "Love, if I kiss you right now, I don't know that I'd be able to stop myself from going too far."

Even as she blushed at what she knew Gin was implying, her irritation at his denial surged and she snapped without thinking, "And what if I don't care? Maybe I _want_ you to go that far!"

He raised one skeptical eyebrow at her. "You want me to fuck you in the back of my car while we're on the road and Vodka's driving?"

Her blush deepened with mortification, especially when Vodka gulped and muttered 'I didn't agree to that' under his breath. "Well, when you put it like that, _no_ ," she said stiffly.

Gin smirked, looking highly amused. "Therefore, I cannot kiss you until I take you back home for the night."

Sherry ducked her head and whispered low enough so that Vodka couldn't hear her, "Do we have to wait that long?"

Gin chuckled, " _Patience,_ Sherry. There'll be plenty of that later, I promise. Vodka has to work tomorrow, so it will just be the two of us the whole day, but let's all enjoy our time together for the rest of the afternoon and catch up on what's been happening in our lives."

"Well, unless one of you is already planning on making dinner, I don't want to eat out at some cheap restaurant nor eat anywhere in Beika," Sherry said promptly. "I don't want to take any chances of Kudo running into us and especially not while I look like this."

"Understood. Then I suppose it's a good thing I made restaurant reservations for dinner tonight on the way here," he said. "Come, let's get in the car. We've been dawdling in the open here for too long."

"Right," Sherry said and turned to move towards the passenger's side door, but Gin slipped his arm around her waist and pinned her against his side.

Vodka took one look at his partner's arm around her waist and walked around to the driver's door on the opposite side of the car without a word. The message received, Gin strode forward, bringing her with him and opened the door. He had to let go of her to pop the seat forward and let her crawl into the backseat, but Sherry was surprised when he climbed into the back with her. His legs were really too long to be comfortable in the back. Sherry wasn't the only one watching him either; Vodka was half-turned in the driver's seat staring at Gin in consternation.

"Oi, Aniki, you meant what you said just now, right?"

Gin gave him a slight frown that looked mildly annoyed. "Am I the kind of man that would break my word to my woman? If we do anything in the car, it will not be when you're around."

"Right. Sorry," Vodka apologized, looking embarrassed for having even asked. Sherry on the other hand felt incredibly aroused by the idea of making love in the backseat of Gin's car once they were alone. It would hardly be the first time, but anything like that would have to wait until _much_ later.

"Sherry, buckle up," Gin said, startling her out of her thoughts.

"Ah, yes," she said distractedly and did so. Glancing over, she saw that Gin was already wearing his. Damn, he was fast. At least he wasn't being a hypocrite this time. The Porsche revved to life and Vodka pulled away from the curb onto the side street. Silence reigned for the next few minutes until Sherry broke it. "So Gin, at this restaurant we're going to, please tell me you're not going dressed like that? At least Vodka's work clothes are acceptable; he wears a suit."

Gin snorted. "Of course I'm not. That's why we're heading back to my place first."

"And am _I_ suitably dressed for wherever we'll be going?" she pressed. "I don't have anything else, so if I'm underdressed, we need to go shopping before dinner."

To her surprise, Gin smirked. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. It's been a long time, so you might have forgotten, but you had complained about that very thing on another occasion. So, to prevent that from happening again and knowing your size and style preferences, I went out and bought something sufficiently fancy with the hope that I'd be able to give it to you as a gift that would remain at my place. Obviously, I never got to enact this plan because then you shrunk and were sent away on an undercover assignment."

"And did you get matching shoes too?" Sherry asked, her eyes wide with surprise.

"Yes, I remembered to get matching shoes," he chuckled and smiled down at her. "I hope you'll like it."

"The shoes?" she said with a teasing smirk.

Gin rolled his eyes.

Still smirking, Sherry shifted sideways in her seat until she was pressed right up against Gin's left side. "Well, if it will make you feel better, I promise I won't hold back on my opinion of the gift."

"Coming from you, that sounds more like a threat than a reassurance," Vodka commented with a laugh from up front.

"Indeed…" Gin agreed and she felt his arm snake around her waist once more. "And yet, that in and of itself is _still_ reassuring."

Sherry hummed, enjoying the compliment for what it was, and nuzzled herself into Gin's shoulder. Apparently, he wasn't satisfied with that level of physical contact as he turned towards her even more and placed his chin on top of her head. It usually annoyed her when he did that, but she didn't complain about it this time because it had brought his neck close to her face. She put her free left arm over his far shoulder to hold him close and nuzzled the crook of his neck right beneath his ear, the spot where his scent was the strongest and most protected by his turtleneck, high-collared coat, and long hair. He was generally surrounded by so many other strong smells, such as those from his coat, his weapons, his smoking habit, his aftershave, and his shampoo and hair conditioner, that it was difficult to actually smell _him_ underneath it all. When she did though, she wouldn't have known how to describe it anyway except as heady and masculine. It was his and she recognized it; that was all she could say. Sherry inhaled deeply and let that familiar, comforting scent flood through her. She could almost pretend everything was normal: that her sister was still alive, that she hadn't shrunk into a kid, that she hadn't ever left Gin's side, that she was home.

She heard Gin chuckle softly from somewhere above her head. "Are you going to stay hiding in my neck the whole way to my apartment?"

"I'm thinking about it," Sherry replied evenly. "Just don't let go."

"You will have difficulty convincing me to do otherwise."

"You two are being sickeningly cute; you know that, right?" Vodka asked.

"When you get a girlfriend, Vodka, then we can talk," Sherry snipped.

"Ouch, I've been hit by a Sherry barb. Quick, call an ambulance," Vodka groaned in imaginary pain.

Gin chuckled again. "And the total so far is Sherry: 2, Vodka: 0."

"Very funny, you two," Sherry said dryly, but made no attempt to extricate herself from Gin. She laid her cheek on his shoulder, still keeping close to his neck, though she ended up flattening part of his coat collar in the process.

They remained closely entwined in relative silence all the way until they finally reached Gin's apartment. Only when the car stopped did Gin release her in order to get out of the car. Sherry climbed out after him and followed him to his apartment, neither of them waiting for Vodka to finish locking up. He led her up to the second floor where he lived and unlocked the front door for her. If Sherry hadn't already visited his place several times previously, she would have been surprised that not everything was black. On the contrary, it looked just like any other normal bachelor pad except for the obvious Western influence in his style choices. She supposed it came from his German-born mother from whom he'd no doubt inherited his fair hair and skin complexion, and his green eyes. It wasn't the tidiest place she'd ever been to, but it wasn't a mess either. It just had the look of being lived in, and well-kept without being clinically sterile.

"It hasn't changed at all since I was last here," Sherry commented as she followed Gin into his bedroom.

"Were you expecting it to?" he asked. He had flattened himself to the ground on his stomach and was rummaging around for something under the bed.

Sherry shrugged. "Not really, but you might have decided to rearrange the furniture in my absence just to give the place a new look."

"Ah, here it is!" Gin exclaimed and pulled out a large, colorfully-wrapped box. He set it off to the side and pushed up onto his knees, then climbed to his feet. Looking mighty pleased with himself, he offered the present to her. "I wrapped it up in here. I'd figured that if I screwed up and forgot your birthday or Christmas, I'd at least have something to give you so you wouldn't bite my head off."

Sherry smirked up at him. "Yes, you and your brilliant mind, but horrible memory. That's why you keep Vodka around, yes? To remember the important dates that I would shun you for if you forgot?"

A sneeze echoed from the front door and both of them simultaneously peered out from Gin's bedroom doorway to see Vodka standing at the entrance. "Sherry, are you talking about me again?" he asked.

Sherry's smirk widened. "I might be, but it's okay this time. I'm insulting Gin's abysmal memory by complimenting your exceptional one."

Gin looked distinctly miffed. "My memory's _not_ that bad," he muttered.

"It is with dates, dear. Well, I might as well open up this present of mine, shouldn't I?" she said rhetorically and began to rip off the paper without waiting for his consent.

Underneath the wrapping paper was a nondescript brown cardboard box. Fortunately, it wasn't taped up, so she didn't need scissors. She opened up the flaps and moved the tissue paper aside. Her eyes widened in interest after doing so and from within, she pulled out Gin's gift. It was a short dress that looked like it should be two pieces as a white silk shirt and a red skirt, but it instead flowed seamlessly together as one item. Her first thought was to wonder if Gin had included her bust size when he'd mentioned knowing her size to get this dress, because it cut low. Real low and at a sharp angle. There was no way she wouldn't be showing cleavage wearing this. In fact, if it wasn't for the band of fabric attached to the shoulders that would go around her neck like a choker, she would be worried about the dress falling off her shoulders. The white sleeves were long and semi-transparent, and ballooned like the classic pirate shirts. Gold and red threads decorated the collar and the wide wrist cuffs. The colored threads also danced around the cleavage lining and trailed down the center around the superfluous buttons that were only there for show.

The skirt part was her favorite shade of scarlet red, the same as the dress she was wearing now, and it looked like it would cut off at her knees. She noticed there was also a slit on the left side of the skirt that would stop halfway up her thighs at the very least, if not higher. Sherry wasn't sure how to feel about that. It would give her freedom to move properly if the need arose and she didn't mind showing her legs off for Gin (undoubtedly why he'd chosen it), but she was a little uncomfortable at the thought of anyone else seeing that much of her legs. Well, Gin would surely notice if someone was eying her and would see to it that they knew she was his, providing her the pleasure of watching Gin become jealously protective of her. She actually enjoyed seeing him jealous, just not when it was unwarranted. This dress though… it was fancy, it was sexy, and despite her misgivings, it _was_ her style. Gin had actually done _very_ well in picking it out for her and she only hoped it really did fit. She wanted to see that stunned, hungry look on his face when she walked out of the bathroom wearing this knockout dress he'd chosen specifically with _her_ in mind. She looked back into the box and found a set of black heels had been hiding beneath the dress. There were a plain set able to be worn with most formal wear, they weren't too high, and she could very quickly see from the size that they would fit her fine. Oh, she was going to look _damn_ sexy tonight!

Slowly, Sherry lifted her eyes from the box's contents to Gin's patient gaze and she gave a playful little smirk. "This is quite the outfit you've put together for me, Gin. Are you sure you're going to be able to handle me wearing it? I'm quite certain your imagination will pale in comparison to the real thing."

"I'm looking forward to it," Gin said, and smirked right back, smug as hell and his chest swelling with pride. So he'd realized how happy she was with his gift, huh?

"Good, then I'm stealing your bathroom," she declared and strode off.

She closed the bathroom door behind her, but not before she heard Vodka say fondly "It's like she never even left" and Gin's pleased confirmation.

She smirked to herself and hugged the box to her chest briefly before setting it down. Sherry also removed her clothes bag from her shoulder, setting it next to the box. She wondered if she should bring it with her when they went to the restaurant for dinner. She didn't want to, but it would be a very awkward situation if she shrunk at the restaurant and didn't have clothes to wear. She pulled the dress she was wearing up over her head and tossed it aside to replace it with the new one. It slid over her figure with ease and Sherry couldn't remember the last time she had worn anything so fine and comfortable. Once she hooked the clasp of the neck collar, she turned to look at herself in the mirror and stared in stunned amazement at her reflection. She looked incredible and so much older! Nothing at all like an eighteen-year-old girl! Even the cut of the dress across her breasts wasn't as bad as she had imagined. She reached for Gin's hairbrush next to the sink and quickly ran it through her own short hair, taming the stray wisps floating around her face and fluffing her thick bangs. Satisfied with her hair's appearance, she reached back down into the gift box and pulled out the black heels, dropping them on the floor. She slid her feet into them and wiggled her toes, testing how the shoes felt around her feet.

She took one last look at herself in the mirror, turning this way and that, feeling empowered by her new mature, sexy appearance. Satisfied and smiling at her own self-indulgence, she finally opened the bathroom door. "Alright, I'm all finished, what do you... _oh_...!" she breathed as she stumbled to a halt at the unexpected sight that greeted her.

Gin had apparently decided to change while she was in the bathroom, but had not yet finished. He had shed his work clothes in favor of a light blue dress shirt that only had one arm through a sleeve and left the entirety of his chest visible to her appreciative gaze. Her eyes roved hungrily across the taut pale skin, taking in every detail and admiring the muscle definition of his arms, his shoulders, his pectorals, his intercostals, his abdominals, literally _everything_. Sherry felt herself heating up in a _very_ familiar way and her face flushed in embarrassment. She knew Gin was fit, and very well-toned even, but how could she have already forgotten how... how damn _beautiful_ his naked body was? In a monumental effort to distract herself, she tried to focus on something else and belatedly realized Gin had stopped moving the moment she'd opened the bathroom door and he was now staring at her completely dumbfounded. He appeared to have forgotten he was half-naked in his bedroom, as if there was nothing in his world apart from her.

A thrill of delight shot through her at this observation, but Sherry only smiled slightly and cocked her hip to the side, inhaling deeply to let her chest rise. She did not miss the way his eyes flickered with her movements. "Enjoying the view? It looks mighty fine from where I'm standing too," she said haughtily.

Her words seemed to bring him back to himself, but he did not hasten to finish dressing, much to Sherry's enjoyment. That was one of the up sides to dating an older man. Gin was very confident in his sensuality.

"You were right," he said, his hungry eyes continuing to peruse her figure at his leisure as he slipped his other arm into the shirt, but left it unbuttoned. "Reality is incredibly more satisfying. You look beautiful, Sherry."

"You look rather dashing yourself. The half-dressed look really suits you," Sherry said teasingly, but felt herself flush with pleasure at the intensity of his gaze.

He smirked back. "I aim to please. Unfortunately, the restaurant would not take kindly to my walking in with half my chest showing."

"Oh, I'm sure the female staff wouldn't mind too much," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Gin chuckled and started on the buttons. "You _want_ other women drooling over me? I thought you were far too possessive for that."

"Speaking of possessiveness," she said slowly and shifted her weight to her other hip, stretching her left leg out straight along the seam and giving Gin ample view of her outer thigh. His hands briefly faltered in buttoning his shirt for a moment. "While I enjoy the maneuverability the slit in the skirt gives me if I need to run or fight for my life, I expect you to take responsibility should anyone that's not you be eying my legs."

"Trust me, that won't be an issue," he muttered and continued buttoning his shirt.

Sherry sighed in disappointment now that the lovely view of Gin's muscular frame was hidden behind clothes and glanced over at Vodka who was leaning against the bedroom door frame. His hands were in his pockets and he wasn't watching either her or Gin. In fact, he seemed to be specifically not looking at either of them, but was staring fixedly at the floor.

An evil smirk crossed her face and she addressed the heavyset man, "Trying to burn a hole through the floor, Vodka? Tell me, is it _my_ breast or _Gin's_ that turns you on so?"

Vodka's eyes snapped to hers and he gaped at her in slack-jawed horror. However, he was spared from trying to answer by Gin's admonition, "Play nice, Sherry. There's no need to be so harsh with him like you are with Kudo." He had tucked his dress shirt into his pants and was now putting on a red tie, looking distinctly irritable. "Vodka, I don't know how you can stand to wear these things every day for work. Ready-made noose is what it is."

"It's to give short women like me something to pull on to bring tall men like you down to our level to kiss them properly," Sherry said before Vodka could get a word in.

"Cute theory, but I somehow doubt it," Gin said, though his expression now somewhat amused.

Deciding she was done playing for the moment, Sherry turned back into the bathroom interior and put her other dress into the box the new fancy one had been presented to her in. She then picked it up, as well as the bag carrying her child clothes, and walked out of the bathroom. She set the box down on the floor along the wall and swung the bag over her shoulder. Gin was already slipping his arms into the dinner jacket when she turned back around to watch him, so she also had the pleasure of watching him pull his thigh-length ash-blond hair out from under the jacket and toss it back behind him. It was like watching a fine silvery waterfall and it was times like these when she envied his long, beautiful hair. Then she promptly reminded herself that she liked her short hair style, it would be way too much work to care for hair that long, and Gin's hair was long enough for the both of them anyway.

"To think you're a silver fox and you're not even thirty yet," Sherry said, unable to resist teasing Gin about his hair again, no matter how much she loved it.

"I'm surprised you haven't already used that one yet," Gin commented and turned away from the mirror to face her fully, his hair swinging around his backside in a gentle flowing arc. That smirk! He was doing it on purpose!

"I'm afraid I'll have to break up with you if you ever cut your hair," she said with all the seriousness she could muster. Of course, she was joking… mostly.

"I'll be sure to keep that in mind," Gin reassured her in the long strides he took towards her and offered her his elbow. "Shall we?"

Sherry pretended to consider for a moment. "Yes, I suppose so," she said with a gracious nod and wrapped her arm around Gin's proffered arm.

"Are you two sure you want me around?" Vodka asked. He was staring at their linked arms with a concerned expression. "If you'd rather enjoy your date without me, I completely understand. I don't want you to think you have to keep me around for the night."

Sherry and Gin turned to each other and their eyes met at the same time. They smiled in understanding, both thinking the exact same thing, and turned back to Vodka simultaneously. "Of course we want you to come with us, Vodka. If for nothing else, we need you to be our chaperone to make sure we behave in public," Sherry said with a slight laugh.

"Especially since this vixen is itching to jump me and start ripping my clothes off any minute," Gin said, an amused glint in his green eyes.

Sherry's expression deadpanned and she turned back to Gin sharply. "Didn't we agree _you're_ the fox?"

"I never agreed to any such thing. That was all you."

"Oi, you two, can your lover's spat wait until after we're in the car at least? We're never gonna get out of here at this rate," Vodka said, sounding half-amused, half-exasperated.

"Ah, true enough," Sherry sighed. "At least _one_ of the men in my life is sensible."

Gin rolled his eyes, but led the way out of his bedroom regardless. Vodka stepped out of the way to let them pass through and as he did so, Sherry caught his hand hanging loosely by his side and squeezed it. She gave him a small encouraging smile which he returned and followed alongside them. Of course, three people walking side-by-side could not fit through the front door to leave, so Vodka let go of her hand when they reached it and stepped outside first. Gin also dropped his arm and grasped her hand instead, then pushed her ahead while he closed his apartment door behind him and locked it. With Gin's place securely locked, the trio walked back down to the car and Vodka once more found himself the chauffeur and sole rider in the front seats. Gin had taken himself into the back with her again.

"Gin, what are you going to do when you have to drop me off at my place for the night before heading back here with Sherry?" Vodka asked with a hint of a laugh in his voice.

"Obviously, I'll be driving, Sherry will be in the passenger seat and she's not allowed to have any alcohol because she turns into a giggly drunk who can't keep her hands to herself."

Sherry frowned at him. "What? I never did anything like that!"

"Yes, you did, but I'm not surprised you don't remember. You were completely wasted, but I was trying to teach you about the names of different alcohol cocktails, at _your_ insistence I might add, which was made more difficult by you feeling me up. It was not a productive night in _any_ sense of the word. You were already distracted and quite beside yourself over one of the rum cocktails being called a Fluffy Critter, but you completely lost it when I told you one of the gin cocktails was called Pink Gin."

Sherry's eyes widened and a very un-ladylike snort escaped her. " _Pink_ Gin!" she exclaimed.

She suddenly had a very vivid image of Gin's fair hair a bright bubblegum pink instead and then another of Gin's classic black clothes dyed that same pink color, and she couldn't help the raucous laughter that burst forth. She thought she heard Gin sigh in resignation and Vodka say something like "I don't think I've ever seen her laugh so hard", but she couldn't be sure.

After a while, Sherry finally managed to calm down and wiped away the tears of mirth that had gathered at the corners of her eyes. "Haha, oh wow. Wow, I needed that, thank you. Ahh, that mental image is going to stay with me forever. Haha… pink gin."

"How fortunate for me," he said dryly.

Conversation between the three Organization members turned to other topics in the car ride on the way to dinner, even though it was occasionally punctuated by random snickers from Sherry every time her thoughts wandered back to the Pink Gin.

()()()()()

"No, I'm serious, you would look really good in pink," Sherry said as she followed him out of the car. She _looked_ serious except for the twitching smile that betrayed her.

Gin rolled his eyes in exasperation. "I've told you before; I'm not making a fool out of myself just to amuse you. I'm not shrinking myself into a kid and I'm not dying my hair pink."

Sherry crossed her arms and pouted. "You're so mean."

"You kind of asked for this, Aniki," Vodka said and he too was smirking. "Considering she completely forgot it the first time, I don't know why you decided to bring it up again."

Sherry latched herself onto his arm, but was speaking around him to Vodka with a rather predatory grin on her face. "Well, I'm glad he did. Such a humiliating, reputation-mocking concept absolutely must _not_ be forgotten by his significant other. Right, Gin?"

Gin stared resolutely ahead, scowling in annoyance and avoiding looking at the two people smirking up at him. "Sherry, I'm sure there's a reason I love you, but for the life of me, I can't think of what is at the moment."

His words had no effect on Sherry whatsoever. "Oh, I'm sure you'll think of something once we get home tonight," she said confidently just as they entered the restaurant.

They approached the hostess at the podium and as soon as her eyes met his, he watched them widen with wariness. It was a familiar reaction. Gin knew he was not as terrifying right now as he was when in uniform, but like his father, he was tall and had a scary face.

Her wariness of him did not prevent her from doing her job and asking, "Welcome, do you three have a reservation?"

"Yes, it should be under Edward Kuroda," he said.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sherry's head snap up to him with her mouth agape, then her focus shifted to Vodka, then back to him again. "You used your real name?" she hissed in a shocked whisper.

"Well, I couldn't very well make a reservation as Gin, now could I?" he muttered back, but he knew what she meant. There was no need for him to make a reservation with his real name, but he had wanted to just this once. Seeing the beaming smile on Sherry's face made any risk involved entirely worth it.

"Yes, here you are. Edward Kuroda for three," the hostess said, reminding him she was still there doing her job, so he gave her his attention once more. It was rather brief, but he did not miss the movement of her eyes flick from him and Sherry to Vodka, nor the slight furrowing of her brow. "Will there be anyone else coming to join you later or is it just you three?" she asked hesitantly.

Gin understood instantly what she was thinking. He and Sherry were obviously a couple, but Vodka's presence confused her, and unless there was a fourth person showing up as his date, she couldn't think of why a young woman such as Sherry would be having dinner at a fancy restaurant in the company of two older, sinister-looking men with no familial resemblance to either her or each other. It looked like something potentially shady was going on.

Gin opened his mouth to correct her assumptions when Sherry cut him off. "Oh, it's just the three of us," she said in such a remarkably pleasant and reassuring tone that it was setting off alarm bells in Gin's head. Sherry had made the same leaps in logic he had about the hostess's assumptions and she was _not_ happy about it. "Actually, my husband-" Gin gave a start. "-and I with our business partner are celebrating our shop's fifth anniversary of successful business."

Even knowing she was lying through her teeth, Gin was more pleased than he should have been to hear Sherry call him her husband.

Regardless of Sherry's hidden anger being the source for the story's creation, the uncertainty cleared from the hostess's expression instantly and she broke out into a radiant smile. "Oh, that's wonderful news! Congratulations! I wish you continued success in the future. Shall I lead you to your seats now?"

Sherry looked too much like a smug cat who'd caught her prey to answer now that she'd put the hostess in her place, so Gin did so for her. "Yes, please do," he told her.

"Right this way then," she said brightly and they followed after her.

While she was ahead of them, Gin dipped his head down to Sherry's level and whispered, "Clever girl. Validating Vodka's presence, establishing your equal standing with the two 'scary-looking men' you're accompanying, and strengthening the overestimation of your true age while vaguely threatening her done all in just two sentences."

"You know what she was thinking you two were; I just couldn't let that stand," Sherry muttered off-hand, though she still looked pleased with herself.

"No, but I would have taken care of that assumption if you hadn't. So what's this about me being your husband now?"

Sherry scoffed quietly. "I don't look related to you and I had to say something, so I-"

"-So you said the first thing that came to mind and that just happened to be marriage?" he asked with a teasing smirk. "I agree, I think Mrs. Shiho Kuroda sounds lovely."

Now Sherry was blushing, but still smiling smugly. "And who's to say I will take your name? Maybe you will be Mr. Edward Miyano instead," she retorted.

Gin quirked an eyebrow at her. "Will?" he repeated.

Sherry frowned up at him in confusion all of a sudden. "Huh? Will what?" she asked.

Gin's smirk broadened. "Just now, you didn't say ' _would_ take your name', but ' _will_ take your name'. Are you that certain you will eventually become my wife in the future?"

He had not thought it was possible for her to blush more than she already was, but he was so very wrong. Her entire face reddened and her eyes became as wide as saucers at the same time she clapped her hands over her open mouth.

"I… no, that… I was just… it doesn't… I mean…" she stuttered in utter mortification at her tongue slip. God, he could not remember the last time she had looked so kissable.

He chuckled and pinned her to his side with an arm around her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze as they continued to follow the hostess to their table. Sherry's normal color seemed to return by the time they were seated and had the menus in front of them.

"So how generous are you feeling tonight?" she asked.

"I'm paying for everything, as long as you don't order the most expensive thing on the menu just because you _can_ ," Gin warned.

Sherry rolled her eyes. "Fine, I won't try and empty my boyfriend's deep pockets on dinner."

"True, you'd rather spend Aniki's money on designer clothes," said Vodka.

"You know me too well, Vodka," she said proudly and propped open her menu. "Now, what shall I have to eat first?"

()()()()()

Dinner passed by with various conversations going back and forth about work and their personal lives, catching up on the time they'd spent apart from each other and including copious amounts of friendly, good-natured heckling for all three of them. It was wonderful, comforting familiarity and Sherry couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so relaxed. She was back with the people she belonged and she was happy.

They were on dessert though when Sherry finally voiced a question she'd had in her head for quite a while now. "Back at the Haido City Hotel, there was the Adraxxi terrorist that the Organization had to take care of and there was the other alien impersonating Pisco, but was there… someone or something else there?" she asked slowly.

Gin and Vodka glanced at each other briefly before turning back to her. "What do you mean? You think another alien was there?" Vodka asked.

Sherry bit her lip and half-shrugged. "I'm not sure. I guess she could have been, but… you guys already know about my sensitivity to being hunted…"

At the very mention, Gin's green eyes flashed with dark anger and Vodka's expression went stony. Yes, both of them knew exactly what she was talking about. During the incident in question, she had been thirteen and newly-arrived in Japan after having spent the greater part of her childhood with the American branch of the Men in Black. She was skilled, but still young, and she had not noticed she was being stalked until it was too late. She'd been caught by a particularly nasty alien that had developed a taste for _eating_ human reproductive organs. Gin and Vodka had been hunting the she-alien down and they were the ones who saved her from that horrible fate. Ever since then, she had developed a sixth sense of sorts for whenever intense feelings of blood lust were directed toward her, whether they were sexual or murderous.

"Do you know who it was coming from?" Gin said in low tones.

She nodded. "Yes, it was a famous American actress named Chris Vineyard."

The silence that followed was deafening and the shocked expressions on both men's faces were frightening in a whole different way.

"Chris… Vineyard…" Vodka said slowly. "You're sure it was her and not someone else?"

"Definitely," Sherry said, feeling even more anxious. Why were they freaking out so much? "In fact, the blood lust coming from her was so strong, I could barely sense it from the Pisco impersonator."

"Sherry, you've never met Vermouth in-person before, have you?" Gin said quietly.

"No, I haven't," she said warily, wondering at the sudden topic switch.

He nodded once in affirmation. "Then you should know; Chris Vineyard is Vermouth's true identity."

She felt like the bottom had dropped out of her stomach as Gin's words resonated in her head. Vermouth… Chris Vineyard… Vermouth… Chris Vineyard is Vermouth. The woman of a thousand faces and her rival for Gin's love. _Vermouth_ was the source of the blood lust, the strength and intensity of which she had _never_ felt before from anyone else.

"Vermouth…?" she said, her voice shaking with a fear she couldn't suppress. "But… but why? We're on the same side, aren't we? Trying to protect the Earth? She can't possibly hate me so much that she wants to _kill_ me! Unless you think it wasn't really her? Like Pisco?"

Vodka looked away, uncomfortable, but Gin held her gaze and slowly shook his head. "No, it's a difficult challenge for other _humans_ to try and be a convincing Vermouth, especially long-term. An alien pulling it off is impossible. As scary as it is for you, Sherry, I'd rather her want you dead and still be human, than for an alien to be masquerading as Vermouth and wanting to eat you. The consequences of the latter have far more dire implications. It would mean an alien has taken out one of the Organization's best, high-ranking operatives and imitated her so flawlessly that nobody has noticed anything unusual in her behavior and no warning technology has alerted us to the alien intrusion. And if the Organization has been infiltrated that high, that deep, that _quietly_ , then Earth will no longer be an alien refuge. It will be a part of the warzone. In other words-"

"-total annihilation," Sherry finished with breathless horror.

While the Men in Black had made good use of the available alien technology and was high-grade state-of-the-art tech by human standards, it didn't change the fact that it was still only created from the leftovers brought by the refugees and existed in the hands of a very small percentage of the human population. Even then, MiB weapons were probably nothing compared to the top-rate military-grade tech being used to fight the alien wars out there in space. If Earth became one of their battlefield sites, it would not survive the destructive onslaught. Now she understood why Gin and Vodka were so worried about her having sensed Vermouth's murderous intensity towards her.

"Okay, so let's assume the safer and more likely possibility that Vermouth is still human and just wants to kill me. For some unknown reason. Doesn't she know I shrank? If she feels that strongly, why hasn't she come after me yet?"

Gin looked thoughtful and crossed his arms. "She's a high enough rank to have been told and she also has 'that person's' favor, and yet, I don't think she _was_ told the true nature of your assignment."

Her eyes widened in astonishment. "Are you serious? How come?"

"Maybe 'that person' was also worried about her going after you once you'd shrunk and were less capable of defending yourself from her," Vodka suggested.

"I think you're right, Vodka," Gin said. "If 'that person' suspected Vermouth would try and get rid of Sherry at the first opportunity, he may _not_ have told her. But Sherry, a word of warning, Vermouth has been incredibly cryptic and secretive lately, even by her standards. Vodka and I last saw her on the way back from Haido City Hotel and she mentioned she was going to be staying in Japan for a while instead of flying back to America. She said there was something she was looking for, but refused to divulge the nature of the object in question, so be careful. She might be looking for you."

Sherry sighed heavily. "Great. Well at least I can sense when she's around, so I know she's not here," she muttered.

Gin smiled slightly. "Don't worry. I may not have your unique sensing ability, but I can easily pick out Vermouth in a crowd, no matter how she disguises herself. She's definitely not here."

She propped her left elbow up on the table and rested her chin on her hand, smirking at her long-haired lover. "With such a dangerous person out to get me, are you sure you don't want to shrink yourself into a kid to stay by my side and protect me full-time?"

"I have never before been tempted by the possibility until now, but no. I'm afraid I'll have to rely on Shinichi Kudo and the other adults around you to do that in my place, should it be necessary," he said, looking distinctly unhappy at the prospect.

Taking pity on him, she stretched her right hand across the table and interlaced her fingers with those of his left hand. "Come on, let's go back home. I've been dying to kiss you all evening and I'm not sure how much longer I can wait."

Gin smirked and flagged down the waiter for the bill. The three Black Organization members left after the bill was paid and Gin got in the driver's seat of his Porsche this time.

However, when Sherry made to get in the backseat so that Vodka could get in, he stopped her and shook his head, smiling. "Nah, Sherry, you can sit in the front with Gin this time."

"But you've got longer legs than me and there's not as much room in the back," she protested. "And since we're dropping you off first, wouldn't it be easier to get out if you're already sitting in the passenger's seat?"

"It would if I was going with you guys," Vodka said, leaning against the car's frame and still smiling.

Now Gin was frowning up at him too. "Vodka…?"

"I'll be taking a taxi home; don't worry about it, Aniki. I got to see Sherry for a few hours and my ego is sufficiently battered from the reunion, but I know how much you've missed her and I don't want to keep you from her more than I have already."

"Vodka… you're really sweet sometimes, you know that?" Sherry said.

"Wow, a genuine compliment without a zinger to follow-up? Now I _know_ I'm not welcome," Vodka teased, gave her a brief, one-armed hug, and started walking away with a backwards wave. "Have fun you two and try to save _some_ of your energy for tomorrow!"

"Bye Vodka," Sherry said even as a light blush dusted her cheeks and then she got in the car. "I know I tease him a lot, but I really do like him. He's a good man," she commented as she watched his broad, black-suited form walk away.

Gin hummed in acknowledgment and started the car. "Yeah, I'm lucky to have him as my partner. It looks like you didn't have to worry about bringing your child clothes to the restaurant after all."

"No, I didn't thank god, but it was better to be safe than sorry," she said with a relieved sigh.

"So if you were to guess, how much time do you think that antidote of yours should give you?"

Sherry hummed thoughtfully and gazed upward at the ceiling, idly tapping her chin as she did so. "My best guess is twelve hours total, though it could easily be less, maybe even half that."

"Twelve hours, huh?" Gin muttered.

A somewhat awkward silence fell between them after that, mostly because there _was_ silence. They both knew what the other wanted, they couldn't have it yet, and talking wouldn't give it to them any faster, so why bother? Until…

"Wait, Gin, where are we going? This isn't the way to your apartment," Sherry said suddenly once she realized what street they were on.

"No, it's not," he agreed.

She stared hard at him. "We're not going to your apartment?"

"Not yet."

She arched an eyebrow. "Then where _are_ we going?"

"Somewhere."

Her eyes narrowed. "And you're not going to tell me where?"

Gin smirked. "Nope."

"I have ways of making you talk."

"Not while I'm driving if you don't want me to crash, you don't," he retorted.

Sherry clicked her tongue and crossed her arms in frustration muttering 'Damn driver immunity', but she paid more attention to her surroundings from that point onward, wondering where Gin was taking her. She was surprised when he stopped the Porsche at the parking lot for some kind of park (it was dark, but she could make out the trees nearby).

"Okay, _not_ that a moonlight stroll through the park isn't a nice, romantic gesture, but did you _really_ bring me here for-mmph!" Her words were cut off by Gin's mouth covering hers in a demanding lip lock. _Finally!_

His kiss was fierce and insistent like he was trying to suck all the air out of her lungs. She moaned loudly into his mouth and cupped his face with her hands, drawing him forward until he was half in the seat on top of her. She hadn't been kissed like this since the day she'd shrunk into a kid and she could already feel the familiar fire coursing through her blood and beginning to coil in her gut. They finally broke apart with an explosive gasp, but remained close, panting heavily and already starting to sweat.

"Shiho…" Gin breathed.

Sherry felt a thrill of ecstasy overtake her. Her _real_ name!

"The back… _now_ …" he panted, his voice already husky with desire.

Even with Gin in her way, Sherry could not ever remember moving as fast as she did then and he was quick to follow right after.

 **(*Warning: Mature content ahead)**

He covered her body with his and kissed her senseless while his hands slipped under her skirt to remove her panties. She helped by lifting her hips and gasped when he squeezed her buttocks.

He stopped kissing her momentarily to finish getting rid of the garment and she gave a small, rather giddy laugh. "Are you really that horny that you couldn't wait to get to your apartment for this?" she asked with a teasing smile.

Gin was completely unmoved by her taunt. "I finally have you back after several months with an unknown time limit hanging over my head. I am _not_ about to risk losing the opportunity for this. Besides, you're hardly one to talk," he purred while his left hand trailed almost idly down her thigh and one finger probed into her hot, moist core, making her whimper with pleasure. "I've barely done anything and you're already wet. You want this right now just as badly as I do."

A second finger entered and she moaned, clawing the seats as waves of pleasure rocked through her. It felt _soo_ good. Nothing else mattered except his fingers inside her and she never wanted it to end. Gin could very well bring her to her climax with his hand alone and he had done it before, but she didn't want that right now, and she was certain he didn't either.

"Gin!" she gasped. "Stop finger fucking me already and give me your cock!"

"I thought you'd never ask," he said, and she could hear the Cheshire grin in his tone.

The hand retreated back up her thigh to spread her legs wider and he plunged in. She cried out and automatically seized fistfuls of his long blond mane at the back of his neck. He set a grueling pace, hammering into her hard and fast. It was tight and so much rougher than she was used to, but it was a desperate, famished, animalistic violence that fueled her ardor and screamed for his conquest. Pain bled into pleasure and it was exactly what she needed. Everything was spiraling out of control, ever cinching, burning, coiling, winding her up with breathless anticipation on the precipice of an explosion.

"Gin...! Gin, I'm gonna-Ahhh!" she began and broke off with a cry of delight.

Her desire sprang free uninhibited and wave upon wave of ecstasy shot through her body and clenched around Gin's cock still inside her. That was the last straw to send him over the edge as well and he groaned, his body stiffening and his semen spilling into her. Oh no…

"Gin, we forgot to-!" she began in a panic, but he leaned down and stifled her protest with a languid kiss.

"It's fine, Sherry," he murmured against her lips. "You'll turn back into a child in probably less than twenty-four hours. Anything that might be conceived tonight won't survive your body's transformation back to prepubescence."

Sherry exhaled with relief and relaxed to bask in the waves of pleasure still rippling through her. "Wow, that was quick, huh?" she said with a warm smile for the green-eyed man still hovering over and inside her.

"It wasn't too rough, was it? I know we generally go slower."

"No, it was fine. I actually kinda enjoyed it," she admitted shyly.

He looked surprised and then gave her a devilish smirk. "Oh? I'll definitely have to remember that," he said and much to her consternation, he was pulling out and sitting back to fix himself up.

"What are you doing? I'm not done yet!" she exclaimed.

Gin saw the stricken look on her face and chuckled, "Oh, I know, Sherry. That was just the teaser for the rest of the night. I wanted to have at least one round with you in the car, but the rest will be back at my apartment. I know how much you love skin-on-skin contact and I will tell you now: I have no intention of stopping until I literally can't move anymore."

Gin climbed back over the seats into the front and Sherry took the opportunity to slap his ass in revenge for earlier. She found her discarded underwear on the floor and shoved them into her bag instead of putting them on. Gin would just take them off again later anyway. "I'm ten years your junior; are you sure you'll be able to keep up with me the whole night?" she taunted as she too moved back to the front.

"Sherry, love, you're going to be sore in places you didn't think were possible, I promise you that, and I'll know I've done my job if you can't walk straight tomorrow morning," he said with that same devilish smirk from earlier on his features.

She would probably end up regretting it in said morning, but right now, it sounded reckless and incredibly hot, and she was already getting aroused just thinking of all the dirty, naughty things they would do to each other once they finally got back to Gin's apartment. She could hardly wait.


	4. Desperate Revival: Part 2

**Author's Note: This chapter is some of the laziest writing I've done in a long time. It's just pure self-indulgent fluff. I have no excuse.**

* * *

Desperate Revival: Part 2

When the next morning finally came, Sherry wasn't even sure she was fully awake when she saw the digital clock by Gin's night table read as after ten. All she knew for certain was that she felt, as Gin promised the night before after they had Round One in the Porsche, both incredibly sore and thoroughly well-loved. Gin had been voracious and she had been no better, which surprised her admittedly. She had no idea if her libido had been enhanced by the antidote or if she was just that starved for sexual activity that the moment her body _had_ a sex drive again, it kicked into overdrive. No matter the cause, her prototype antidote had definitely worked well so far. She had been her adult self for eighteen hours already and experienced none of the effects she'd endured when she'd used the baijiu to transform. Err… well, she'd experienced none of the effects as a result of the drug anyway.

"Sherry, quit squirming already," Gin muttered grumpily into her ear and the arm around her waist pulled her flush against his naked chest.

She smiled at him over her shoulder and rolled over onto her other side to face him, snuggling even deeper into his embrace. Considering how late in the morning it already was, she should probably do something sensible like get up, get dressed, and make breakfast, but she simply couldn't find the motivation to do so. Waking up in Gin's arms was a luxury she had taken for granted before and she wasn't going to waste this. Reality would eventually catch up with her, but that time wasn't now.

"I love you, Gin," she murmured, smiling wider still when she felt his arm squeeze back in response.

()()()()()

Gin could not remember the last time he'd had such a lazy day. Even on his days off, he didn't usually lay around in his apartment and do absolutely nothing. Yet, that was exactly what he did. It had started when he woke up late in the morning to the familiar weight and warmth of Sherry in his bed and he might have believed he was still dreaming were she not wiggling around so much. Quietly pleased that reality had not deceived him again, he'd brought her close and she promptly settled down, leaving him free to doze once more.

It was nearly noon when he woke up again and he did not begrudge Sherry for leaving the bed to go to the toilet. While he'd enjoyed the view of her backside, he hadn't missed the stiffness in her walk, so he'd decided to be a good boyfriend and start getting the bath ready to help her to soak some of the soreness out. He hadn't expected her to grab him by the arm and drag him into the bath to soak _with_ her. His bath tub really wasn't big enough for the both of them, but when Sherry was determined, there was very little that could stop her. So that was how he ended up leaning against one end of the bath tub with Sherry nestled between his legs with her back leaning against his chest and her head resting on his shoulder. They hardly spoke and despite her use of him as a human body pillow, he would have been hard-pressed to deny he wasn't enjoying the quiet, steady affection that was so very different from the frantic sexual frenzy of the previous night.

"We've been in the bath for quite a while," Sherry had piped up after what felt like hours – and was probably only one at most – of relaxing in the once-hot water.

"Umhm," he'd hummed.

"We should probably get out soon and maybe eat something," she continued.

"Probably," he agreed.

"We're going to turn into prunes if we stay in here much longer."

"The sexiest prunes," he said, dead serious.

"There's no such thing as a sexy prune," she giggled.

"There is when those prunes are named Gin and Sherry."

"No, juniper berries and grapes are used for gin and sherry, not prunes."

He rolled his eyes. "Someone's being a smartass this morning."

"It's technically the afternoon now," she crooned and turned her head slightly to kiss his jaw.

"I'll get out whenever you're ready, but I won't force you to hurry up," he reassured her, stroking his fingers through her short locks.

"Well, if _that's_ the case…" Sherry sighed dramatically and rose to her feet in one fluid movement. "Then we should _definitely_ get out of the bath for some food at least."

Gin smirked as he watched her get out of the bath and start drying off with a towel. "And here I was starting to wonder if you even needed the extra energy after last night since it's past noon and you're not dying of hunger yet."

That earned him a towel thrown in his face and by the time he'd uncovered his eyes, Sherry had already left the bathroom, presumably to put something on and start scrounging for food. He wished her luck in that endeavor; he didn't even know what he had. Without further reason to stay in the bath, Gin drained the water and dried off with the same towel Sherry had thrown at him. Once dry, he unbound his hair from the heavy clip pinning it all against the back of his head and it instantly fell freely through his fingers like fine silk. Although it was not as thick as it otherwise might have been, one of the major downsides to having such long hair was that it took forever to dry, so if he wasn't going to wash it, he saw no point in letting it get wet.

He left the bathroom and returned to his room to retrieve some clothes. Sherry wasn't there anymore, but a quick count of the clothes still strewn over the floor told him she was wearing her underwear and his shirt from the night before. Smirking at the mental image, he pulled on underwear and pants and wandered into the kitchen hoping to find Sherry. Sure enough, there she was already standing at the stove with an expression of intense concentration on her face with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to her elbows and the hem just reaching her thighs.

Gin came up behind her and placed a quick kiss right behind her ear before wrapping his arms around her waist and looking over her shoulder at what she was cooking. "Omelets? Going American on me, are you?"

"Well, I _did_ grow up in America, but it's not a strictly American food," she said stiffly, though they both knew he was teasing and she was just playing along. "Besides, you didn't have very much and this is the quickest thing I could think of based on what was available and what I was feeling up for."

"Sorry. I might have made more of an effort to stock up sooner if I'd known I would get to see you this weekend."

"Maybe after breakfast-"

"-Lunch," he corrected with a smirk.

Sherry looked over her shoulder and gave him her classic deadpan expression. "Maybe after _lunch-_ " she turned back to the stove and flipped the large omelet onto its other side to cook. "-we can go out and restock your cupboards before I leave."

Gin raised a questioning eyebrow. "Is that wise? You still don't know how much longer you have before you change back into a child."

"True, but considering it's been about twenty-one hours since my initial transformation and I still haven't experienced any symptom of regression yet, I'm working under the assumption that I have maybe three hours left," she said.

"Three hours?" he repeated, his eyes wide with shock.

He'd had her around for twenty of those twenty-one hours and it was the longest he'd seen her in months. Probably the longest she'd been herself in months too, and even three hours was a lot compared to the last time she'd been her grown self, but still… It seemed like so little time left before she was out of reach once more. Gin tightened his arms around her waist and nuzzled her neck.

"Honestly, Sherry, I don't feel like going anywhere or doing anything other than enjoying my remaining time with you while you're still here," he said heavily.

Sherry huffed in exasperation, "I swear to god, you are still the clingiest man I've ever met."

"Yet you love me anyway," he retorted with a sly smile.

"I'm going to burn your omelet out of spite."

She ended up not following through on that threat (possibly due to a couple of new well-placed hickeys at the base of her neck) and lunch was thankfully both tasty and unburned. After lunch, they washed the dishes and then he led her back to his room to knead the stiffness out of her body. It was half his fault that she was so sore after all. However, Sherry decided to be difficult and wanted to play with his hair first, so he gave up and let her do so. Much to his annoyance, Sherry didn't lay herself out on her stomach for her massage until after she'd put his hair up into two long braids and a bun. However, his annoyance with her was replaced with satisfaction as he felt her slowly start to relax and become boneless under his touch.

Gin had no idea how long he sat there with Sherry sprawled across his bed while he worked out the knots in her muscles that were not exclusively caused by last night's ravaging. Honestly, it _could_ have been hours and Sherry had become so relaxed, she very easily could have fallen asleep on him. He doubted she was, but it pleased him that she could feel so at ease around him, even with all of the secrets and stressors she had to put up with in her current life. It wasn't always that way, especially not when he had first started dating her. She'd been too awed and self-conscious to really let herself relax around him back then. She'd come a long way since then, but it also meant she had become more self-reliant which was all too readily apparent last night at dinner with Vodka.

Sherry had spent some time talking about her life secretly masquerading as a kid, but not much and not about the important things that weighed on her mind on a more regular basis. As much as he enjoyed having her back, as temporary as it was, Gin rather suspected even this short stint of normalcy was a much-needed reprieve from her constant need to act and lie to everyone around her. It was needed, but what she was going back to was so much more terrifying. Vermouth was after her. He had not expected that. Like him, she was one of the best and highest-ranking operatives of the Men in Black, and that woman was hunting down his girl and he couldn't do anything to protect her. He had no proof that Vermouth even had the _intent_ to kill Sherry, and he only knew that much because he trusted Sherry's sixth sense for danger. Yes, Sherry was relaxed right now, but it would be foolish of him to think that her future concerns weren't percolating in the deeper recesses of her mind.

"Hey… Gin…?" her voice brought him out of his reverie and her head was turned, glancing up at him from the side with half-lidded eyes.

"Yes, Shiho?"

His use of her real name earned him a brief, delighted smile before it faded back into a more somber expression. "Our work is pretty dangerous, isn't it? As strong, smart, quick, and cautious as you are, one day it just might not be enough and you'll get killed."

Gin frowned slightly, but nodded. "Yes, it's possible, but that's a risk that comes with the territory and I'm willing to take it."

"And you're not afraid that you'll die with regrets?" she pressed.

"Oh, I am," he sighed as he ran his fingers through her hair in a soothing motion. "Mostly that I'll never see you again, but this isn't really about me, is it? What's bothering you, Sherry, truly?"

He suspected; he just wanted to hear her say it.

"Akemi was deeply in love with Akai, but because he failed your last test of loyalty, she never got to tell him the truth of our work and she never got to see him again because of the nature of our cover story. She was good at hiding it, but I could tell that she was still hurting from losing him. She must have had so many regrets when she died and our secrets killed her just as much as that Klythonian did," she said quietly, her voice half-muffled by her elbow. She exhaled deeply and whispered barely audible, "I'm scared, Edward. I don't want to die living a lie with the same regrets my sister did."

Gin's eyebrows arched in surprise. He'd underestimated her fears. Sherry knew he didn't much care for his first name and he'd only told it to her as a symbolic offering of reassurance that he was serious about his relationship with her. She only called him by it when she was feeling particularly vulnerable, like now. He trailed his hand from her hair to her shoulder and squeezed it, carefully turning her over to lay on her back. She let him do so, but then gripped his forearm tightly. Her expression was taut and guarded while her pretty blue eyes were wide and glassy, like something fragile. She looked like she might cry. He exhaled through his nose and leaned down over her, kissing her gently which she returned. Everyone had their breaking points and Sherry seemed to be reaching hers, but such frailty still didn't suit his quippy little spitfire.

"And what is it that _you_ fear regretting, Sherry?" he asked.

She gave a derisive snort. "That I'll die as a child? That I have to lie to everyone around me and keep secrets to cover even more secrets? That I'll be stuck with this mission forever and have to put the rest of my life on hold indefinitely? Take your pick; I've got plenty."

"And you sound like you're giving up," he said. "You won't die as a child. Remember, _you_ were the one who evaluated Kudo's abilities and character traits and determined that he would be a more than suitable match for what we were looking for. My only role was to provide a second opinion and confirm your choice. He has the mind, skills, social connections, and strength of character to do everything in his power to protect you from Vermouth. He won't let her get to you. I can't do anything about the lies and secrets you must keep unfortunately, but this mission won't last forever."

"You don't _know_ that," Sherry insisted stubbornly.

"It _can't_ last forever. We'll find who's after Hiroshi Agasa _and_ you and see to it they're no longer a threat so you can come home. You have to believe that or else you'll just get depressed thinking about how much longer we'll be apart."

"Gin…"

"-No, let me finish," he interrupted. "I've already promised you multiple times before that I will wait for you to come home and won't die before then. Men don't wait for things that aren't worth their time. I love you so much, Sherry, and whatever will happen, I don't want you to have any regrets about _us_."

"Then can I marry you? Right now while I'm still myself?" she asked.

Gin's jaw fell open as he stared down at her in stunned silence and then he smiled after a beat. "And here I thought you would prefer the more traditional romantic approach to a marriage proposal."

Sherry's eyes widened hopefully. "Then will you...?"

He shook his head, though he felt like a heel when he saw her crushed expression. "No, Sherry, you're too young and you're letting your emotions rule you. It's only your current fatalistic thinking that's making you act so hasty. However, when the time comes that your assignment is over and you permanently return to your normal form, if you still want me then, I promise I'll marry you."

Sherry rolled her eyes. "Now, _you're_ making me wait? Isn't there something Chianti says about that? Something along the lines of 'Men who make women wait will be hated'?"

Gin shrugged half-heartedly, but he was smirking. "Didn't know you'd been around Chianti enough to hear her gripe about that. Groan at me all you want, but I can still hear the smile in your tone."

"Ah, you got me." The smile he heard now appeared on her face, and then it inexplicably vanished just as suddenly. She gasped aloud and her eyes widened, her body tensed. This expression… this reaction… It wasn't… No, it couldn't be! Not now! Gin quickly whirled around to read the clock on his nightstand. It hadn't been twenty-four hours yet; there was still an hour left to go.

"Sherry, what's happening? Is the antidote wearing off?"

She gritted her teeth and nodded. Sweat was already starting to appear on her forehead and her breathing was shallower. "I think it's starting to, but it's different than before. With the initial drug and the baijiu, the spasms began more severe and were more frequent. This was a warning; it's not going to be over quickly."

Gin's brow furrowed. "So you're going to suffer the transformation process for longer?" he growled.

Sherry whimpered in pain and clutched the front of her shirt over her heart. "P-probably. Just… just hold me and keep an eye on the clock. I want to know… the exact time this antidote stops working."

He pulled her into his lap and cradled her upper body with his arms while occasionally glancing at the clock, just as she asked. There was nothing else he _could_ do. She was being attacked by the effects of an antidote losing its effectiveness. Time passed at a snail's pace and it was absolute agony. First five minutes then ten, then twenty, and Sherry's condition only worsened. The spasms that wracked her body started coming stronger and more frequently, her brow was soaked with sweat, and her breathing was so fast, she was nearly hyperventilating. And still, the only thing he could do was hold on to her.

At twenty-seven minutes since the first symptom appeared, a high-pitched shriek tore out of her throat and she curled inward automatically. For the second time, he watched her shrink before his very eyes and become swallowed up by the much-larger shirt she was still wearing. She shrunk and convulsed until she let out one final, painful gasp and collapsed against him, falling limp in his arms. Her breathing was still heavy, but not as shallow and she didn't seem to be in any more pain. He guessed the transformation was over now. Belatedly, Gin looked over at the clock on his nightstand. It read thirty-one minutes from the initial start time.

"Sherry? How are you feeling?" he asked after a moment.

She groaned and gazed up at him with half-lidded eyes still hazy with pain. "Like a truck ran me over and poured molten lava into my bones while I was having a heart attack," she grumbled. "Time?"

"Thirty-one minutes," he answered.

She nodded dazedly. "So it probably _is_ a 24-hour antidote with perhaps an hour's worth of time variation in either direction. Antidote onset time is still quick, but antidote reset time is much more delayed compared to the original drug and baijiu. I didn't expect that. Heh, knowing Kudo, he'll probably end up needing the warning when he uses this."

"So, I guess I have to take you back now?" Gin asked.

Sherry looked up at him and though her features were ten years younger once again, it was still the eyes of the woman he loved looking back at him. She stretched one of her tiny hands upward toward his face and laid it upon his cheek. "I guess…" she agreed reluctantly, but made no move to let him get up.

He sighed and lifted her off his lap, setting her down next to him on the bed. "You might want to get dressed in real clothes then," he said heavily as he stood up. "It'll be incredibly awkward and suspicious if Kudo ever stumbles upon your laundry and finds a men's dress shirt in a size none of the current house inhabitants wear."

"If he stumbled across my laundry, I'd kill him first," she grumbled, but hopped off the bed and wandered over to the bag she'd brought with her anyways.

When she started unbuttoning her shirt, he averted his eyes and fixated on both undoing the mess Sherry had made of his hair and acquiring a more casual shirt to wear. Kissing her as a child was uncomfortable enough, but there was just something inherently wrong about watching his lover undressing while she was prepubescent. With his hair long and free once more and a teal turtleneck over his torso, he chanced a glance at Sherry and was relieved to find her dressed as well with her regular clothes now stuffed into the bag instead.

"You ready?" he asked.

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Are _you?_ " she retorted.

He shook his head. "No." There was no point lying to her.

She gave a wry smirk that didn't reach her eyes. "Me neither."

She approached and reached up, wrapping her hand around his fingers. He gave it a gentle squeeze and they walked out of his apartment, their long-term separation imminent once more.

* * *

 _Didn't get around to mentioning it in the last chapter, but I completely made up the name I gave Gin. The idea for the first name came from the songs "Alive" and "Confrontation" in the Jekyll and Hyde musical and how he, more than any other member of the Black Organization, even the Boss, is Conan's personal enemy. Honestly, the idea for his last name comes from Hyoe Kuroda because, yes, it's one of my headcanons that Hyoe is Gin's father and beyond that, it seems like a name that suits him anyway._


	5. Contact With the Black Organization

**Author's Note: I've had a ridiculous amount of free time on my hands so I've been able to do nothing but write (I don't normally update this fast). Also... um... writing this chapter told me that this story, more than any other previous chapter, is trying to develop a plot. This story was not supposed to have a plot. Or be multi-chaptered. Help? No Sherry in this one, but this is one of my favorite Black Org moments (not my No. 1 favorite, but it ranks high).**

 **Takes place during the "Contact With the Black Organization" episodes (309-311).  
**

* * *

Contact With the Black Organization

"What do you mean Vodka's meeting with Itakura is this morning?" Gin said sharply.

" _Just that,"_ Curaçao, Rum's confidante and his younger twin sister, said over the line with a shrug in her voice. _"He called us to say he was meeting with Itakura at 4:00 AM to submit the completed program we requested him to make and to let you know about it. We would have informed you anyways though."_

Gin's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Indeed… and he didn't say why?"

" _No, not over the phone. Noir apparently didn't think to ask him about that."_

"Understood. Is the location still the same?"

" _Yes, it is. Are you planning on meeting him there?"_

"Obviously," he snorted. "Until I get to the bottom of this, I will only respond to communications from either Rum or 'that person' and I'm relying on you to inform Rum of everything you told me if you haven't already. I will call you directly once I have resolved this anomaly."

" _Understood. Best of luck, Gin,"_ the fair-haired woman said and he thought he heard an apologetic note in his sister's voice before she hung up on her end.

Gin hung up as well and immediately shifted his driving course to Kenbashi station, his mind racing. It was normal to change meeting times. Something comes up and rearrangements have to be made. However, the meeting was supposed to be for tomorrow. Vodka would not have had any events suddenly crop up that would require him to reschedule; he'd have made sure of that, especially since Itakura had been so difficult to convince. Gin was grudgingly forced to admit that Vermouth had been instrumental in assisting with that. Itakura _may_ have had something come up, but he was a very particular and organized man, and the Organization had a good sense for his normal routine, so it didn't seem likely _he_ would be the one to need to reschedule this meeting. It also bothered him that the rescheduled meeting time was so soon after the contact call. Vodka had only given Itakura four hours to get to Kenbashi station in Tokyo from the cabin in Gunma. If meeting tomorrow was inconvenient, than why wasn't it rescheduled for a later day or even late this evening after the station had closed? Why did it have to be this morning? His mind only kept coming back to one thing. It just wasn't like Vodka and that scared him more than very little else in this world could.

His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel as he gripped it tightly. He prayed he was wrong, that there was some _other_ external factor influencing his partner's odd behavior and that he _hadn't_ been killed and impersonated by an alien. There seemed to be far too many impersonations these days and he couldn't help but worry about the fact that they seemed to occur near him. While he had been stuck with Curaçao since birth and Sherry was near and dear to his heart, _Sherry's_ sister had been his oldest friend. When the identity switch had been discovered, he had been just as devastated as Sherry and it had been for his own sake, as well as Sherry's, that he had hunted down Akemi's killer to avenge her.

Then there had been Sherry herself. While she had not actually been impersonated, as he had believed at the time, she had been under direct threat from another who operative who _had_ been. Now Vodka was behaving strangely and he prayed to a god he didn't even believe in that his worst fears were unfounded.

()()()()()

Silent as a phantom, Gin turned the last corner into the coin locker room and observed his partner with sharpened senses. Vodka was on the phone with someone, probably the lower-ranked scouts surrounding the station outside and was working on something in one of the topmost coin lockers. His height and build were correct as well as his voice pitch and manner of speaking. He did not appear to have noticed his presence yet and remained ignorant as Gin took a few steps closer. That too, was just like Vodka; he wasn't the most observant of men. He sniffed the air experimentally and caught a brief whiff of fresh cigarette smoke and Vodka's cologne. As best as he could tell at this point, it was the real Vodka standing a short two meters away from him. Time to put that to the test. He moved forward and drew out his gun.

"What? Only some drunks and a kid entered the station?!" Vodka exclaimed suddenly. "That can't be! Look again!"

Gin chose that moment to release the safety and raise his gun to the back of Vodka's head. He heard Vodka's surprised gasp, but to his credit, he did not try and turn around. "What is this?" Gin demanded quietly.

"A-Aniki?" Vodka stammered, seeming both fearful and relieved.

"This meeting wasn't supposed to be until tomorrow," he continued in the same icy tone.

Just like with Sherry before, if this was an imposter, he would have them know how badly they screwed up before he disposed of them. Secret law enforcement officer though he was, the number of people he was close to could be counted on one hand and he refused to allow _anyone_ to get away with harming them without retribution, no matter who or what they were. 'That person' had tried disciplining him for it the first time he'd blasted an alien for taking pot shots at Akemi, and he had made his position clear then that no punishment would change his behavior and he was too efficient at his job to be let go. 'That person' had not been able to argue otherwise even if it did mean more paperwork for Gin when he chose to eliminate a fugitive rather than capture it. It was a small price to pay.

Vodka may be careless, but he wasn't stupid. He knew exactly what Gin made of the current situation and what his assumptions must be.

"Actually, the time was changed because Mr. Itakura couldn't do it then," Vodka explained with a slight tremor in his voice as he turned to face him.

Gin raised an eyebrow. "Ohh?" he said. He was not satisfied with that explanation and Vodka should know better. He readjusted his gun so that it pressed against Vodka's throat and he saw his partner's expression contort with panic. "So you decided it was best to give him the upper hand?" he asked sharply with a warning note in his tone. He better not have done so. He _really_ should know better.

"N-No, the time was decided by me," Vodka corrected, and Gin could see sweat already beading on his forehead. "He couldn't open the mail at his house due to a blackout, so I called him up."

He decided the man before him really was his partner and it was with some sense of relief that he holstered his gun. Vodka correctly took this as a good sign and sighed with relief before turning back to the open coin locker behind him. He wrenched something free and when he turned around, he was holding a disk in a plastic case.

"I wasn't able to dispose of him, but I did get the program," Vodka said and gave the disk to Gin.

Gin accepted the offering, already thinking of how they would need to track him down again to erase his memory when he noticed the strands of scotch tape stuck to two of the edges of the disk. In fact, there was sticky tape residue along all four edges of the disk case. Itakura hadn't been seen and the disk with the program had been taped down within the coin locker. His instincts had been right, though not about the source; there _was_ something suspicious afoot about this meeting and the tape was the final proof. This was a trap and Vodka had fallen right into it without even realizing it.

"Oi, do you know why there's tape on this?" he asked, cutting off his partner mid-sentence. He did not wait for an answer before continuing, "It was to get your fingerprints, since you couldn't peel it off with your gloves on."

Unlike the American branch of the Men in Black, as Sherry had informed him, along with not being required to wear a suit as long at the color was black, the Japanese branch did not require its agents to have their fingerprints burned away. As a result, Vodka could still be identified by his fingerprints as his civilian identity. He quickly glanced around and his green eyes landed on a fresh cigarette that was undoubtedly Vodka's. Now that was just careless.

"And you lit a cigarette when you didn't see the person you came to meet," he picked it up off the ground and stood up, returning to Vodka. "This saliva will tell them your blood type, you see. Why don't you hold on to it?" he suggested and inserted the cigarette into Vodka's slightly open mouth.

His partner's expression was still dumbstruck with shock, but he finally came to his senses enough to remove the cigarette and he looked worried. "Aniki?" he said quietly.

Gin did not answer Vodka's unspoken query, but had already moved on to the disk still in his hands. The answer was obvious; Vodka was being hunted by someone and they were after any information they could get about his identity in order to find him when he was more likely to be vulnerable to attack. It was Akemi and Pisco all over again. Gin pulled out the disk and ripped away the backing.

"Look, they also wanted to find our hideouts," he said and showed the back of the disk case to Vodka: the back with the hidden transmitter. "See, there's a tracking device in this case. This is one clever fox," he commented with a smirk of amusement that he did not genuinely feel.

Inside, he was shaking. Akemi was gone, Sherry was still under threat, and Vodka… If Gin had not suspected something was wrong… if he had not made it to the time of the meeting… would he have been hunting down Vodka's killer next? Vodka flushed red with anger and swore at Itakura, but Gin merely shook his head and crushed the transmitter beneath his heel as he explained. This was not Itakura's work; with his heart condition, he had probably not been anywhere near the cabin nor the train station that morning. Somebody else had received the contact message and somebody else that sounded exactly like Itakura had spoken to Vodka over the phone. What were the chances that the true perpetrator was still around, he wondered? He removed one of his gloves and laid his palm flat against the case.

"Then the guy that I talked to on the phone was…?" Vodka began uncertainly.

"That was likely someone he hired, but they screwed up this time," Gin agreed as a thrill of anticipation ran through him. "This case… it's been wiped down, but it's still emitting heat."

"That means…!" Vodka whispered

"Yeah, he must be hiding nearby," he said in a deadly whisper.

They moved as one; both Men in Black drew their guns in the same breath and Gin gestured with his head for Vodka to take the far side of the lockers. Whoever this adversary was had screwed up majorly. There were no good places to hide in a coin locker room. They advanced forward row-by-row with Vodka's flashlight lighting up the dark spaces and their guns covering both ends of the lockers, systematically eliminating the places this foolish foe of theirs could hide. Eventually, there was only one row of lockers left.

Vodka grinned widely, his confidence fully restored now that they were hunt _ing_ rather than being hunt _ed_. "Heh-heh, I guess there's nowhere for him to hide around here," he chuckled.

"There's always somewhere," Gin admonished and the grin on Vodka's face faded a little as they continued their advance.

Vodka may be fully-confident that they would find their culprit, but this wasn't over until the fox was smoked out into the open and he could look into the face of the one who sought to do in his partner. Gin pressed up against the back of the last aisle lockers, his gun at the ready and his breathing surprisingly even despite his pounding heart. He and Vodka moved together and found…

Nothing.

Gin's eyes widened and his mouth fell open in shock _._

Vodka approached him looking just as bewildered as he felt. "Aniki, he's not here. What do we do now?"

No, he was here. He was not wrong about the case and none of the lower-ranks had called back to report anyone leaving the area. The culprit was still hiding somewhere in this room.

"Aniki?"

His gaze almost automatically shifted to the coin lockers on his right. _There's always somewhere._ Without further conscious thought, Gin yanked open the closest coin locker he could reach and peered inside. He barely registered Vodka's surprised outcry. After ascertaining that nobody was inside that particular coin locker, he shut it and opened the one just below it, and then the one just below that. They were somewhere in this room and he would find them even if he had to open up every single locker. Size was no barrier to aliens; Sherry had once mentioned knowing a species back in America that had _lived_ in a locker and even an alien the size of a small child could be just as dangerous as one ten times the size of a normal human.

Wait…

Gin was opening the door of the locker on the last row.

 _Child…_

He didn't even get the door halfway open before he stopped and smirked, comprehension dawning on him. "Hmph, what am I doing, an adult couldn't fit in here," he said loudly and shut the locker door, then stood up to his full height. "Well then, let's disguise and leave; the police could be on their way."

"Eh? Because of the guy Itakura hired?" Vodka said, once again completely bewildered by his sudden change in demeanor, having not been able to follow Gin's mental train of thought.

"Yeah. Always be on guard, because there's someone investigating us, _a fox as clever as a detective_ ," Gin said, continuing to speak more loudly than necessary while Vodka followed him out of the room, making a silent 'ohh' of understanding. Once they were well-clear of the coin locker room, Gin called the leader of the lower-ranks still surrounding the area. "Pull out. The situation is green and we've got what we came for."

" _Roger that, sir,"_ the leader answered.

Gin hung up and Vodka finally let out a deep sigh of relief. "It was Kudo, wasn't it?"

"I believe so. No, I _know_ so. Remember? Right before I made my presence known, you were on the phone and the lower-ranked agents surrounding the station told you that the only people who had entered were some drunks and a _kid_."

Vodka gave a start. "Oh yeah, they did!"

Gin smirked again. "Shinichi Kudo's skills are definitely improving, but he's still no match for me. He consistently keeps underestimating me and he's fortunate I don't actually want him dead. Heh, with so many near-misses, I wonder if I'm the stuff of nightmares yet."

"Aniki!" Vodka scolded.

"What? It'd be funny! I build myself up as this terrifying, murderous psychopath and imagine we get to the point where we finally tell him our true identities? I have him at gunpoint and I pull the trigger, and instead of a bullet, he's struck by a rubber suction cup. Even though he won't remember the revelation, his stunned expression will be priceless."

"You're kind of an asshole; you know that, right?" Vodka said.

"I beg to differ. I just have a very peculiar sense of humor," Gin corrected.

"A sense of humor that you and Sherry both seem to share."

He grinned widely. "Indeed. Clearly we are a match made in Heaven."

"Maybe not in _Heaven_ , exactly…" Vodka snickered.

"You can laugh now, but I'm going to tell her you said that and you're going to be in so much trouble when my maybe-eventual fiancée returns home," Gin warned.

"I'm pretty sure the world's not ready to deal with the two of you as a married couple."

"Fortunately, the world has time to prepare for that moment. Now, I need to call Curaçao and update her about the situation. I presume you have your own transportation somewhere around here?" he asked.

"Yeah, I parked the car a short distance out and walked the rest of the way."

Gin nodded. "Good. I'll see you later then."

Vodka gave a one-handed wave. "Gotcha. Take care, Aniki. Don't spin out in the snow."

Gin snorted, "As if I'd ever risk my car like that on purpose." Without further delay, he dialed Curaçao's number and waited for her to answer.

" _Morning, Gin. What news do you have for me?"_ Curaçao asked.

"Good news, fortunately. Vodka has not been compromised and though the suspicious change in timing _was_ the result of a trap, it was one set by Shinichi Kudo."

" _Ah, I see. And the Organization's cover is still intact?"_

"Hmph. Naturally, and I didn't even have to neuralyze him. Before I realized he was the mastermind behind the plot, I was working under the assumption that one of our true enemies was trying to get to Vodka, so I'm sure Kudo was mere moments away from fainting out of fear."

" _Evil twin of mine, you're doing it again, aren't you?"_

Gin broke out of his temporary reverie. "Doing what?"

" _Making that creepy, predatory smirk of yours."_

Gin's grin was instantly replaced with a dark scowl. "What of it?" he said defensively.

" _Nothing. Just another thing that makes me wonder what that child sees in you,"_ Curaçao sighed.

First his best friend and now his little sister; why was everyone making cracks at him about Sherry lately? He'd only told Vodka about Sherry's proposal. Curaçao couldn't be trusted with that kind of information without undergoing a whole lot of heckling first. "Kudo's detective skills continue to improve, but as he is now, he's still no real threat to us. Annoying and highly inconvenient when we're not expecting his meddling, but not dangerous."

" _So it may be worth it to consider staging some 'Black Organization' crimes in his vicinity every so often to make him feel like he's moving forward in bringing us down and returning to his adult body when he's really not?"_

"Exactly."

" _Understood. I'll run it by Rum, but I expect nothing will happen soon."_

"No, but I don't suppose he'll need anything soon either," Gin said thoughtfully. "Vermouth seems to be keeping him unexpectedly occupied at the moment. You don't happen to know what she's up to, do you?"

" _No, she's been very mum for a while now, even with 'that person', which is unusual. He trusts her, but this particular brand of silent secretiveness isn't like her and it's started to make him antsy."_

"I bet it has," Gin muttered under his breath.

" _Thank you for the update on the situation with Vodka. I'll keep in touch and let you know what the verdict is on a plan to keep Mr. Kudo busy,"_ she said.

"Thank you. And… stay vigilant, Emma," he added as a quiet afterthought.

" _Wooow, using my first name and everything. Are you trying to be all big brotherly for once?"_ Curaçao said sarcastically.

Gin rolled his eyes. "Shut up," he grumbled and hung up.

Once the phone was back in his coat pocket, he groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Sherry may have chosen _too_ well in picking their guinea pig for the Apoptoxin, her back-up protector for her child form should she need it, and the Organization's living witness for their 'criminal activity'. He had really _not_ needed any of the extra stress and fear he'd just finished putting up with so early in the goddamned morning because of Kudo's persistence.

* * *

 _Yes, I made Curaçao Gin's twin sister. Why? Because it doesn't contradict any current, existing material and because I could._


	6. Head-to-Head Match With the Black Org

**Author's Note: Phwoo! This is my longest chapter to date for this fic at over 12000 words. This fic already numbers 81 pages on my word document. It's funny; I hit a mental block at one point and had a hard time moving forward with it, but two days ago, I just picked up my 'pen', so to speak and forced myself through it and the rest of the writing just starting flying out like it was no big deal. While this is not necessarily one of my top favorite Black Organization moments, it's certainly a good scenario and writing it all out for this AU was a ton of fun. I'm actually surprisingly pleased with everyone's performance in this chapter.  
**

 **Takes place during the episode of the same name "Head-to-Head Match With the Black Organization: Two Mysteries of the Night of the Full Moon", episode 345.**

* * *

Head-to-Head Match With the Black Organization

Vermouth had found her. She knew where she was hiding and knew her secret. Ever since she realized that, every time she had woken up from her cold, Kudo had been there at Dr. Agasa's place the whole time, so she had been unable to contact Gin to let him know what was going on. She was genuinely terrified for her life. Even hearing that woman's name from Kudo's lips reduced her to a state of panicked hysteria. She _had_ been relying on Kudo to keep her secret safe and he'd slowly, steadily failed her. Now that her secret was known, his protection simply wasn't enough and she needed an _adult_ to keep Vermouth away from her. She didn't blame Kudo in the slightest for his failure; he'd done the best he could, but it was proof enough that he was simply no match for an opponent like Vermouth.

"I have to go if I want to deal with them," Kudo said.

A different kind of panic seized her. "No, don't go! Forget it! It's a trap, you'll be killed!" she shrieked before dissolving into a sharp coughing fit.

Her terror for him was genuine and had nothing to do with the cover story for the Organization. This situation wasn't some carefully-crafted farce; this was real. Vermouth was after her and anyone who stood in her way would undoubtedly be eliminated with extreme prejudice.

"Yeah, that's a possibility," Kudo said solemnly.

Haibara's breathing was shallow and pained as she tried to recover the lost air from her coughing. "Then, then why…" she began when a sharp pinprick struck her neck. Her mind just barely managed to register that he'd hit her with a dart from his wristwatch before she fell forward and consciousness gave way to the black haze of sedated sleep.

()()()()()

"Even if I don't get permission to investigate further, it doesn't matter," Gin said darkly while glaring out the front window at the stretch of highway ahead of him. Vermouth was on the move and he had a bad feeling as to what that meant. _Sherry…_ His green eyes narrowed further. "If she does something extremely liberal, I won't let her go easy, even if she is 'that person's' favorite," he swore, because he would rather be _damned_ than let that woman get away with hurting Sherry if he could prevent it.

"So, what are we gonna do?" Vodka asked.

Gin gave him a side-eyed glance. " _We_ aren't going to do anything. _You_ are going to disguise as a monster for this off-season Halloween party of hers and keep me updated on anything unusual that may take place there."

"What?! Why do I have to go?" Vodka exclaimed in protest.

"Because both of us don't need to and it would be much easier for you to disguise than me," he supplied easily. "You just need a face mask and you're set. You don't have to deal with hiding long hair."

"If you thought it was important enough, you'd find a way to make it work and go yourself, regardless," Vodka muttered.

A smile twitched at the corner of Gin's lips. "I'm your superior and I'm ordering you to go in my stead?" he offered.

"So you're pawning me off at this stupid party you don't think is important enough to observe for yourself just so you can literally go driving around the city all night unaccompanied while smoking and burning gas," Vodka said with a deadpan stare in a very dry tone.

Gin shrugged and nodded. "That about sums it up."

Vodka sighed with resignation. "I really hate you sometimes."

"I know."

()()()()()

Haibara heard soft voices speaking from seemingly a long way off and she fought to open her eyelids. Her determination won out and fuzzy-looking, bright light from overhead filtered in. She blinked her eyes a few times and her vision sharpened back into focus. She sat up and coughed, then looked up to where she heard Kudo's voice coming from. By the look of things, she had been moved to her basement lab room and the door was closed, probably locked to keep her in. She felt a twinge of annoyance at him; was she now a prisoner in her own home?

She slid off the couch into her slippers that someone had been kind enough to leave for her and started walking towards the desk when she caught sight of a tray full of medicines sitting next to her computer. Haibara found herself smiling softly in spite of herself. Kudo really did care for her. Even with everything that he'd been through on her behalf, he still kept risking his life and peace of mind to protect her. The bus hijacking incident in particular sprung to mind. She had been paralyzed with fear over Vermouth's presence and so great was her terror for the woman that she had completely given up. At the time, she'd somehow talked herself into believing that it was best for everyone if she died right then, thinking that at least she'd finally be able to see her sister again. Then, like a knight in shining armor, Conan had appeared and dragged her out, launching headfirst out of the bus window just before it exploded and sent them tumbling across the rough asphalt.

Later, Haibara had wondered what the hell had come over her deciding it was okay to let herself get killed like that. She certainly hadn't been thinking of Gin at the time. Even now, she still didn't have the heart to tell him what she'd almost done. If he knew, he'd pull her from the assignment despite her orders from 'that person' and to hell with the consequences. Still, Conan had saved her when she wouldn't save herself. She could understand why Ran loved him so much. If she didn't have Gin and really _had_ been hiding from the Black Organization, she probably would have fallen in love with him too.

Another coughing fit overtook her, and she resumed walking towards the far-right drawer of the desk. She opened it and examined its contents. The things in the drawer were slightly rearranged, so Conan had already searched it for the spare tracking glasses. Haibara closed the drawer and coughed again. He intended to challenge Vermouth, just as he'd promised. A part of her wanted him to go out there and fight Vermouth away from her while she stayed safely locked away inside the basement, and it was a part she was ashamed of. Vermouth wasn't after Kudo, but he was putting himself in unnecessary danger just for her. If he got killed, then it would be all her fault. _Her_ fault for choosing him to be the Apoptoxin's guinea pig and dragging him into this whole convoluted mess in the first place. Kudo may have been somewhat inconsiderate and suffered from a case of overinflated ego when he was evaluated, but he hadn't done anything to deserve _this_.

Haibara's mind was made up. She went over to the far corner of the room and pulled out a spare coat and stockings. She put them on, occasionally coughing all the while, and it was as she was putting on one of her black stockings that she heard Conan's and Agasa's voices from upstairs stop speaking abruptly. It must have been pre-recorded. She didn't know what their reason for doing so was, but the lack of sound suddenly made her all the more anxious. She had to get out of here now. Haibara quickly finished rolling up her stockings and returned to the couch she'd been sleeping on. She got down on her stomach and stuck her hand underneath it, feeling around for a bit before pulling out the spare tracking glasses that Conan had searched for. She stuck the glasses in her coat pocket and then walked back to the desk. She pulled open a different drawer this time and examined the various tools within. Finding a _very_ thin screwdriver that looked like it might do the job, she approached the basement door and inserted the thin metal point into the lock's opening. Haibara twisted and turned the tool over and around, listening carefully to the clinking metal inside. This would be much easier with proper lock-picking tools, but she didn't have those available to her right now. What she had would have to be enough. It _had_ to.

She noticed a different sound from upstairs now and she stopped momentarily to listen. It sounded like… the front door opening… and then closing. Kudo! Renewed panic set into her. That must have been him who'd walked out just then. He was going to meet Vermouth now! In her haste, the screwdriver slipped from her grasp to the floor, nearly stabbing her in the hand with enough force to bruise. Haibara took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. Freaking out would not get her out of the locked room any faster. She stooped down to retrieve the item and resumed her attempt to pick the lock with more care, but no less urgency. It took way too long and she feared she would never get it open, when she finally heard the lock click. She gasped and threw the door open. The dark stairs brightened from the light in the basement and she ran up them straight into the empty circular living space above. A quick glance out the window revealed that even the Professor's yellow Beetle was gone and there was no sign of either Kudo or her alien charge. What did he think he was doing at a crucial time as this? Regardless, Haibara was stuck with no mode of transportation to get to where she needed to be. She chewed on her lower lip in frustration and then set about finding a phonebook; she knew Dr. Agasa kept one somewhere near the landline phone and she only hoped he hadn't moved it somewhere else.

Unlike with the basement lock, luck smiled on her this time and she found the phonebook with ease, so she pulled it up onto the counter and started looking for a taxi company to call to come pick her up and take her to Kudo, wherever he was. She found a number and called them, then hung up afterwards with nothing to do, but wait. While she waited, she found her thoughts tumbling over each other in an anxious loop. She was scared, and scared in a different way from how Vermouth's hunt had been slowly suffocating her. This wasn't anything like the bus hijacking. Then, she had chosen to sit and wait for death to come to her. This time, she was choosing to walk straight to it. Kudo had risked his life to protect her several times already and he was in mortal peril even now for her sake; it was time for her to repay the debt she owed. She could be selfish with Gin, but Kudo was not hers to be selfish with. There were too many people in his life that still loved him for him to throw his life away on someone like her.

She coughed again and hugged her arms tightly. She was sure Gin would hate her for doing this; he had such a fierce will to live and would fight for his life until he breathed his last. She had always admired that about him long before their relationship had even begun when she was still getting to know him. A wave of despair suddenly seized her and she struggled not to let any tears fall. She'd never see him or hear his voice again. All the half-formed hopes and dreams they'd had… the promises they'd made… all of them were swallowed by the darkness of the future looming before her. How long would it take for him to hear about her death? Would it be immediate or would it be a few weeks later? She'd made him promise not to die on her before their true reunion, wrongfully-assuming she would be safer from such fatal threats, but she had made no such promise back.

Haibara feared what would happen to her lover when he finally found out she was killed by Vermouth. There was a very important reason why it was decided that Gin, of all people, would be the one to administer APTX-4869 to Kudo that had nothing to do with his high rank among the Men in Black. He was merciless, especially when his loved ones were threatened, and it was not at all hard to believe in another life, he would have been the kind of criminal Kudo thought he already was. He had hunted down Akemi's killer with single-minded intensity and eliminated them without remorse. She imagined he would probably do the same to Vermouth, even though she was human. In Gin's eyes, there was no difference where his loved ones were concerned. What would become of him then after he'd avenged her, she did not know, but she could only hope that Vodka and his unnamed sister would be able to look after him when she was gone.

She heard a car pull up and she peered out the window again. The taxi had finally arrived. She swallowed nervously and fished the tracking glasses out of her pocket, putting them on her face. This was it; there was no going back now. With resolve in her mind and fear in her heart, Haibara opened the door to the house and stepped outside to the taxi waiting to drive her to the gallows.

()()()()()

"Shinichi Kudo?" Gin repeated, his brow furrowed in confusion. "Back up and clarify: is he there or not?"

" _Um… sorta?"_ Vodka answered over the phone. _"It's weird over here, Aniki. First, Kudo, as himself, not Conan Edogawa, revealed himself to the entire cast of people present only to then reveal that he wasn't Kudo, but Heiji Hattori, the high school detective from Osaka."_

Gin's green eyes narrowed in thought as he lit up another cigarette. "Odd. What business does Heiji Hattori have disguising himself as Shinichi Kudo at a monster party?"

" _He knows Conan is Kudo, right?"_

Gin nodded absently. "He does, so he should know better than to disguise himself as somebody who will supposedly be killed if his survival is discovered. The misdirection is such an unnecessary risk to that secret."

" _You think Kudo asked him to do it?"_ Vodka asked.

"Without a doubt, but the big question is 'why'? Why did Kudo feel the need to draw attention to his true identity like that? If it was to create an alibi, then Hattori's reveal afterward completely defeats the purpose, and your description of the spectacle tells me the intended performance was not for the assembled civilians, but rather for Vermouth."

" _Speaking of Vermouth…"_ Vodka said hesitantly. _"It seems she blackmailed somebody into actually killing a big-time movie producer here."_

Gin's eyes widened. "She _what?_ "

" _That's what the culprit said at any rate once he'd confessed to committing the crime. And… I'm not as good at finding her as you are when she's disguised, but I can't find Vermouth anywhere. I honestly don't think she's been on this ship at all tonight."_

Gin tapped his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. "Neither Vermouth nor Kudo are on that ship, so the party was just one big distraction, was it?" he growled. "I may actually kill them both at this point and save myself from graying early. When's the boat expected to dock again?"

" _Early morning, so it won't be for several hours yet."_

"Very well. If I'm not already at the docks waiting for you, call me and I'll come get you," Gin said.

" _What are you going to do now?"_ Vodka asked.

"I'm going to call Sherry and ask her what the hell is going on with that detective brat tonight. If this is another one of his attempts to capture Organization members, then I want to know so I can deal with it properly," he said irritably.

" _But aren't you not allowed-?"_

Gin didn't hear the rest of Vodka's question because he ended the call. No, by Sherry's rules, he _wasn't_ allowed to contact her, but his nerves had been jumpy all evening for unexplained reasons and this latest piece of information had certainly not done anything to improve his mood. He just wanted to know what was going on; was that too much to ask? Even hearing Sherry berate him for calling her would be worth it if he just understood the situation he was dealing with. He dialed her number and held the phone to his ear, waiting for her to pick up.

The phone rang…

And rang…

And rang…

And went to Sherry's voicemail.

Gin frowned briefly, but hung up and dialed again. Maybe she just hadn't been able to get to the phone in time? He waited a second time and just like the first, it went to her voicemail. He sighed and waited for the beep before recording the message, "Hey Sherry, it's me. I know I'm not supposed to call you, but I need to know what's going on with Kudo tonight. Please get back to me soon. Stay safe, love. Bye."

His message done, he hung up again and settled back in the driver's seat, lost in thought. Sherry's phone was on, but it had rung twice and she hadn't answered either time. That suggested she wasn't near enough to hear her phone and that bothered him. A lot. She obviously wouldn't have expected him to call, but where was she that she didn't have her phone within reach? On a spur of the moment decision, he took an exit off the highway and set a course for the Arquillian scientist's residence. He didn't know what he expected to find, but he had nowhere else he could go to find answers.

After several turns down side streets into the slightly more suburban part of the city, Gin found himself once more parked at the end of the street that the Agasa and Kudo houses resided on. He got out of the Porsche and walked down the sidewalk to Dr. Agasa's. Once he reached it, he looked around at the front yard through the barred gateway. The lights were off inside, but he wouldn't have expected them to be on at this time of night either. What was missing from sight anywhere in the vicinity was the yellow Volkswagen Beetle that the Professor drove. Vaguely wondering if he would regret this and equally finding himself not caring, Gin climbed up the metal gate and jumped over the top, landing in the front yard in a full crouch. He briefly touched his front chest coat pocket and felt both the sunglasses and neuralyzer hidden there. He probably wouldn't need them, but at least he had them. He stood up and moved as quietly as a phantom to the front door of the house.

He tried to turn the knob and found it locked, of course. Well, he had ways around that, and ways that would leave no visible trace of the lock having been picked open either. From within one of his coat pockets, he withdrew a palm-sized chrome, cone-like object with a rounded base and a single rotatable blue ring around it. It was called a multi-key and it was another piece of hybrid human-alien tech produced by the MiB's Research and Development team. He placed the point of the object into the key hole until it met resistance, then he turned the blue ring 90 degrees clockwise. The chrome cone immediately began to flatten on the sides and extend outward into the key hole until the blue ring at the base changed to green. Gin turned the ring another 90 degrees in the same direction and it turned red. He turned the newly-created key and heard the lock in the door click open. With a smirk, he pulled the key out and turned the door knob with much greater success. The lack of a chain lock on the door only further confirmed that nobody was present in the house, but where _were_ they?

He scowled and whipped out his phone to dial Sherry's number once more. He put it to his ear briefly to listen for when her phone started ringing and then pulled it away to listen for the sound anywhere in the house. He heard a faint noise coming from the back and pursued it. It cut off before he reached it, but the sound had led him to a set of steps leading downward. The basement? He redialed the number as he started walking down and found himself in a small, surprisingly warm room. He quickly spied her phone laying on the desk next to the computer, so he hung up and returned his phone to his coat pocket. It was as he'd suspected: Sherry had left the house without her phone, but that still didn't tell him where she or Dr. Agasa had gone so late at night. Gin gazed around the room, taking everything in. Cold air was heavier than hot air, so basements were usually colder than the floors above, but this one wasn't and there was a humidifier running as well. There was a pillow and blanket on the couch, both of which looked rumpled, and a folded towel that he found was still damp when he picked it up. Closer examination of the pillow revealed a few familiar reddish-brown hairs that had been shed and only belonged to one person he knew. Sherry had been sleeping here and fairly recently as well if the towel was any indication. His sharp green eyes caught sight of a tray laden with an assortment of bottles and he approached it to determine their contents. A quick glance at the labels told him they were various different medicines, including cough syrup and one for fever.

This, the humidifier, the warm basement, the towel, and the brown hairs were evidence that Sherry was sick and had been resting in this room as recently as that evening. Was that the reason why no one was home? Had her condition worsened so that she had to be taken to the hospital, and it was just coincidence that it happened tonight? It was possible, however… was there a reason a sick person needed to rest in the basement and couldn't do so in the main part of the house? Gin's eyes critically scanned the room once more and fell upon something he had missed in his initial observations. There was something lying on the ground by the door. He walked back over and stooped down to pick it up. It was a thin, _very_ thin, screwdriver and the tip was shiny like it had been scraped against something metallic. Gin clenched his hand into a fist around the screwdriver handle and pulled the door closed to see the basement side of it in better lighting. He knelt down and examined the door knob up close. There were scratches around the keyhole and some metal shavings still stuck inside. The door had definitely been forced open from the inside.

His brow remained furrowed as he stood up and continued staring at the door. His mind was racing, trying to link all the evidence together to recreate the story of what happened and why. Sherry was sick, but she had been locked up down in the basement and later broken out. Why would she need to be locked up in the first place? And if she was sick, then what had motivated her to escape her imprisonment anyway? Just like that, all the pieces fell into place. Gin stood there reeling for but a second before he was on the move again, pulling out both his phone and the multi-key at the same time as he ascended the basement stairs.

He had just finished locking the front door and turning the ring on the base 180 degrees counter-clockwise – which caused the ring to turn blue and the cone to resume its normal shape – when Vodka finally answered him, _"Yeah, what's up, Aniki?"_

"The party _was_ a distraction," Gin began quickly. "Vermouth attempted to use it to lure Kudo away from Sherry, but it doesn't look like that worked. I just finished checking the house and nobody's home, not even the Arquillian. It seems like Kudo may have instead lured Vermouth away, but Sherry knows where that location is and followed after them."

" _She followed them? But how can you tell?"_ Vodka asked.

Gin clicked his tongue in annoyance. "Give me a moment; I need to climb the gate to get out."

" _I can't believe you actually broke into the house…"_ was all he heard Vodka say before his voice was out of hearing range and the phone was back in his pocket.

Just as before, he climbed the gate without difficulty and landed neatly on the sidewalk outside. His long strides quickly ate up the distance to his Porsche as he pulled his phone back out and resumed conversation with Vodka. "I can tell she followed them because she's sick and was locked in the basement, but she still picked the lock with a screwdriver of all things and broke out anyway. She was determined to get out, no matter what and if Kudo planned to confront Vermouth on his own in Sherry's place-"

" _-she wouldn't be able to just stand by and let him take that risk for her!"_ Vodka finished in sudden understanding.

"Exactly," Gin said. He'd reached his car and gotten into it, turning on the engine before driving off back in the direction of the highway. "Vodka, please tell me that _somebody_ knows where Vermouth is right this minute or that we have _some_ means of tracking her current location."

" _I… I'm sorry, Gin. But I… I don't think we can find her until she wants to be found. She's not an alien,"_ Vodka said apologetically.

Gin felt numb. Nothing. There was… nothing he could do to fix this. He couldn't find Vermouth and he couldn't find Sherry. He was powerless; when had he lost so much control over his life? Mortified, he felt the corners of his eyes start to sting. Oh no. No, he was not so far gone that he was going to lose his dignity to tears on top of everything else. He screwed his eyes shut and forced them back.

" _Aniki, are you okay? You went really quiet on your end,"_ Vodka said gently.

"I'm… I'm not. There's nothing I can do," Gin admitted heavily.

" _Sherry's a tough little cookie. She's pretty good at managing to wiggle out of tight spots; she'll make it out of this one too,"_ Vodka reassured him.

Gin huffed. "I hope you're right, Vodka."

()()()()()

"There, that's the place, where those two cars are," Haibara said to the taxi driver. "You can drop me off right behind that white one."

"Okay, but, listen, are you sure this is the right place? It doesn't look safe for a little girl," the driver said.

"It's fine, sir. My aunt's there and she knows I'm coming," she lied smoothly. She was surprised her voice still sounded so calm given how her heart was trying to leap out of her throat in terror.

"Well, I guess if your aunt's expecting you, it's okay," the taxi driver said a little uncertainly and did as she instructed, pulling right up behind the white car. "Okay, your total is-"

"-Here," Haibara said and shoved a stack of bills into his hand. "You can count the change towards your tip."

He quickly counted the bills and gave a low whistle. "Thank you very much for your patronage, young miss," he said with a tip of his hat to her. "Make sure you stay safe."

Haibara gave him a wide, childish smile that felt even more fake than the lie she'd just spouted about her aunt. "Thank you, mister," she said brightly and got out of the car.

She took a few steps back and stayed to watch it turn around and leave. All the while, she repeated the same mantra she'd told herself the whole car ride from Dr. Agasa's to here. No turning back. No turning back. No turning back. Haibara turned to face the direction of the cars. Everybody was over by the farther black one. There was a person lying on the ground against the car that she couldn't make out and there was Conan standing in front of that person and facing another, facing Vermouth. The tall American woman turned around and Haibara froze when their eyes met. This freezing, biting pressure… this killing intensity… there was no doubt this was Vermouth after weeks spent living in hiding, fearful of being found by her. And now she had.

No turning back.

She clenched her trembling hands into fists and willed her feet to move forward first at a walk, then at a run, bringing herself closer to her fated end.

"Don't get near! Don't come any closer! Go back, you idiot!" Conan yelled at her, his voice hysterical, but she wasn't going to listen to him. He had no idea what she had done to him, but he still looked out for her and treated her as a friend. She didn't deserve his kindness and she didn't deserve his protection, just as he didn't deserve to be entangled in her mess.

' _No, Kudo,'_ she thought. _'Let me do what I must. This has nothing to do with you, so you can't die. You musn't die!'_

Haibara was forced to stop running before she reached him because her body was still weak from her illness. Each breath she drew was labored and painful, but still she kept moving forward, not taking her eyes off Conan's panic-stricken face while the tracking glasses beeped incessantly into her ear.

No turning back.

She finally stopped just in front of the black car about three meters away, still breathing heavily, a stitch in her side that she refused to pay attention to.

"Run Haibara! Quickly!" Kudo yelled.

She would not. She'd been running for too long. She wasn't going to run away from this.

He continued to shout at her. "What are you doing?! Run Haibara! Leave this place! Hurry!"

Vermouth struck like a viper. In one swift movement, she grabbed Conan's wrist, turned the watch around, and fired the sleeping dart right back at him. Haibara gasped as he succumbed to the powerful sedative, falling limply forward with only Vermouth's support of his arms keeping him upright.

' _Please no! Please don't kill him! I'm here, you've got me, and I'll even let you kill me, just don't kill_ _ **him**_ _!'_ Haibara begged desperately of Vermouth in her mind, but couldn't find the voice to say the words out loud.

Vermouth did not seem inclined to finish him off right at that moment though. She set Kudo down on the ground and leaned him gently against the side of the car with more gentleness than Haibara would have expected of the Woman of a Thousand Faces.

"Goodnight, baby," Vermouth said quietly to Conan in English, then her light blue eyes flicked in her direction. "And…"

Haibara gulped fearfully, but did not look away from that woman's face. Vermouth lifted the hem of her right pants leg and withdrew a small handgun that had been set in a holster around her calf. She stood up to her full height and pointed the gun directly at her in the center of her forehead.

"Welcome, _Sherry_ ," Vermouth said, still in English, with a smirk of vicious triumph on her face. "You're a stupid woman," she continued, switching back to Japanese. "You not only ruined this poor boy's plans, but also came to get killed."

Haibara closed her eyes, trying to find the strength to do what she knew she must. "I did not just come here to die," she said at last as she removed the glasses and stuffed them into her jacket pocket. "I came to end this."

With the glasses gone and nobody else shielding her, it was just her and Vermouth standing here. Conan was out cold, but there was still someone, another woman, who was conscious and leaning against the car able to hear every word she and Vermouth said, so she would not be able to speak as candidly as she would have liked. For what she needed to say though, a woman as smart and secretive as Vermouth would have no trouble understanding the subtext.

"Even if you are arrested," and for killing her, Haibara had no doubt that she would. "As long as I live, the Organization's hunt for me will continue." The perpetual lie to disguise the true context of the conversation. "If I sacrifice my life, do you agree to not harm anyone, but me?"

Vermouth's eyes narrowed and her cruel smirk widened like that of a cat who toyed with its cornered prey.

"No one," Haibara insisted. That included Gin and Vodka too. They would be devastated enough about her death without Vermouth toying with their emotions. "Promise?"

Her eyes seemed to relent. "Okay, other than this FBI woman that is," Vermouth agreed. Haibara couldn't tell whether Vermouth had said that to keep cover or if she would really kill the woman, but she didn't have anything more to bargain for her life as well. "But you have to go first, Sherry. Don't hate me, but rather your stupid parents who started this experiment."

Haibara found herself thrown off by Vermouth's words, but she didn't let it show. What did she mean? Was it just a nonsense phrase tossed at her for the sake of the story or was there an actual reason behind it? If there was, then what experiment was Vermouth referring to? What had her parents started? Was there possibly _another_ reason that Vermouth hated her that had nothing to do with her relationship with Gin? She had so many questions now, but she would never get answers to them. She had dug her grave and now it was time for her to lay in it.

Unexpectedly, the black car's trunk opened up and Haibara stared in shock as Ran's face appeared from around the edge. Vermouth turned and stared just as dumbfounded as she was, not even making an attempt to raise the gun and shoot her. Hers was the only one though; gunshots still fired at Ran from somewhere much higher and farther away than Vermouth. Ran wasn't even trying to dodge the bullets, she was just jumping on top of the car and sliding forward as fast as she could. It was pure luck that all the shots missed her.

"Wait, Calvados!" Vermouth shouted in the direction the shots were coming from, but still the bullets kept flying.

Calvados? What was Calvados doing here and why was he helping Vermouth try to kill her? She'd only interacted with him a handful of times, in the company of Chianti and Korn, and she had no grudge with him, nor him with her as far as she knew! But even if he did, why was he shooting at Ran?!

"Hold your fire, Calvados!" Vermouth screamed again, her voice more panicked than before.

Still the sniper's bullets kept flying and Ran didn't stop running. She jumped off the car and ran towards her with a determined expression. Haibara could only stand and stare, part of her still shocked to see her and another part blankly wondered what she was so determined to reach.

"Stop!"

With a start, Haibara realized Ran wasn't simply running towards her, she was running straight _at_ her! Ran was trying get to _her!_

"Didn't I tell you to stop?!" Vermouth shouted and fired her gun once, but in which direction, Haibara had no idea.

She could not take her eyes off the young woman pelting towards her as fast as she could and miraculously avoiding every bullet that came her way. Ran leapt towards her and caught her, holding her tightly in her arms as they hit the ground. Ran bore the brunt of the force on her arms and half-cushioned her own fall with her body as they skidded to a halt. Haibara abruptly realized that silence had fallen. The hail of gunfire had stopped.

"Let go of the brown-haired girl," Vermouth ordered, her voice sharp and irritated.

The command snapped Haibara back to her senses and she desperately tried to push Ran off her. With the way Ran was holding her, her body was shielded from Vermouth's view just enough that there was no way for Vermouth to shoot her without shooting Ran. This wasn't supposed to happen! Why was she even here?! She didn't want Ran to die for her any more than she wanted Kudo to!

"If you don't want to die, hurry!" Vermouth snapped.

"No! Don't move!" Ran screamed and pinned her to the ground completely underneath her. Haibara literally couldn't move her now and she couldn't even see Vermouth from this new vantage point. Despair welled up in her. This was exactly what she'd come here to try and prevent and she'd still failed. Vermouth was going to kill Ran just to get to her.

"Hurry! Move!" Vermouth yelled at Ran and her gun fired twice.

The bullets struck the ground a foot from them on either side. Warning shots. The next ones would undoubtedly be fatal. Haibara renewed her struggle against Ran's firm grip. She couldn't let Ran die here!

"No!" Ran cried with frightened tears in her eyes. Whether it was directed towards Vermouth or to her, Haibara couldn't tell.

Two more shots, both only inches from their heads. Vermouth was losing patience and still Ran was holding her down and hiding her from view!

"I already contacted the police, just endure it a bit longer, please!" Ran told her in a frantic whisper.

Another bullet struck the ground near them and Ran gasped, but buried Haibara's head into her shoulder. Ran's own shoulders were shaking badly. She was deathly afraid, but her hold on her remained strong and she would not let her go. It came to Haibara then… this kind of gentle, devoted, unwavering protection… it was just like…

' _Sister…'_ Haibara thought as she rather subconsciously gripped the fabric of Ran's jacket and memories of her sister came to her.

It was incredible the thoughts one could have right before they were about to be killed. Haibara finally understood something that she had not before now. For the longest time, she had been distant with Ran, even unkind in her purposeful neglect to associate with her, and she had not understood why she treated such a good, sweet, loving person so. Now she knew. Without even realizing it, she had recognized the many similarities between her and Akemi. After having so recently lost her sister, she had not wanted to get close to someone who resembled her so strongly and constantly reminded her of what she'd lost. On some level, she'd feared that Ran would somehow try and replace Akemi. Was it foolish of her to think that? Probably, but not... it wasn't unreasonable, was it? Inexplicably, despite everything going on around her and the very real possibility she still might die, Haibara felt herself drifting away. She supposed... the extra stress she'd placed on her body and mind tonight while she was still sick... was probably the cause...

"Let go of her!" Vermouth screeched once more and then… then she defaulted back to English and said something very strange, "Move it, Angel!"

There was another gunshot, but she didn't hear it land anywhere near them this time. Haibara wondered drowsily if it was someone besides Vermouth or Calvados that had fired. It was a nice thought… that someone might come and save all of them, but… not very… realistic… And so, she found herself drifting off to thoughts of being safely held in her sister's protective embrace.

()()()()()

Morning light finally broke through the darkness and put an end to the night's battles, but while some conflicts were resolved, others still remained and the consequences of those still remained to be seen. Gin watched with detached interest as the ghost ship slowly pulled into the harbor and then finally allowed its passengers to disembark. He didn't bother looking for Vodka yet; there were a lot of police cars waiting due to the murder that had taken place aboard the ship. Vodka would come to him as soon as he was able. That was one of the advantages of having such a distinctly-recognizable car. It took a while, but Vodka finally managed to separate himself from the crowd and walked towards the car. Once he was inside, the first thing he did was tear off the mask and Gin had a brief look at his unbelievably wide, innocent-looking eyes before they were hidden by sunglasses once again. Vodka looked at him after they were on and Gin handed him his hat without asking.

He put that on too and tilted his head back against the seat with a heavy exhale. "Alright, how much money did you waste last night?" Vodka asked.

Gin huffed and started up the car to leave the harbor. "A full tank of gas and an entire pack of cigarettes," he grumbled.

Vodka startled and sat upright. "An entire pack in one night- Aniki, that's a lot, even for you!" he exclaimed, looking aghast.

"Oh. And was _your_ woman at some unknown location in a dangerous confrontation last night leaving you with no idea if she's even still _alive_ right now?" Gin snarled.

Vodka snapped his mouth shut and Gin was glad he did. Now was _really_ not the time to criticize him about his bad habits. "I guess Vermouth still hasn't revealed herself yet?" Vodka said tentatively.

Gin only shook his head, not trusting himself to speak again. Vodka didn't deserve his vitriol. Coincidentally, his phone started ringing right at that moment. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the number on Caller ID. He didn't recognize it, but he answered anyway.

"Yes, who is it?" he demanded.

" _Ah, Gin, good that I was able to get a hold of you so quickly. It's Vermouth."_

Gin's eyes widened and then narrowed as his lips widened into an evil grin. Well speak of the fucking devil, and she shall appear. He saw Vodka's confused expression out of the corner of his eye and mouthed 'Vermouth' at him. His partner's eyes widened too, but he remained quiet, ready to listen to the one-sided conversation.

"Vermouth?" he repeated lazily. "You seem to have been rather busy tonight and yet no one knows where you've been."

She started to laugh, but then gasped and hissed in pain. _"Sorry, Gin, but a secret makes a woman, a woman,"_ she said.

Gin's eyes narrowed to angry slits. "Then is it too much to ask why you're calling me from a public phone and sound like you can't breathe?" he demanded.

Vermouth chuckled, _"Ever the perceptive one, you are. I ended up getting into a firefight with the FBI last night and I just barely managed to get away. Shuichi Akai was there – I'm sure you remember him – and he broke three of my ribs."_

He quirked an eyebrow upward. "I remember Akai, but what were you doing that put the FBI on your tail and caused you to end up in a firefight that you weren't prepared for?"

" _Oh, just some stupid stuff,"_ she said with a dismissive air. _"One of their little kittens was pursuing a vendetta against me for something she believes I did to her twenty years ago. I was dealing with a shakedown involving a Class II criminal and its flunkies with incredibly well-done human disguises. Unfortunately, they were resistant to my first set of persuasion tactics, so I had to move on to the second set and that was when the FBI ambushed me, thinking I was threatening innocent civilians."_

Gin had to admit: Vermouth was an excellent liar, but he'd sell his Porsche if he believed a single word of what she said was true. However… "So, it looks like the FBI is back onto us again, with Akai at the forefront no less," Gin said with a sigh. "This may end up making things more difficult for us in the near future. At least you were able to escape successfully."

" _Yes, I was lucky in that regard,"_ she said with a breathless laugh. _"Anyways, I'm in a phone booth on the side of Interstate 20. Can you come get me? I have a problem and can't really move right now."_

"Yeah, I can get you. It'll be a while though, so you'll have to sit tight and wait for a bit," he said.

" _Don't you worry about me. I'm not going anywhere fast any time soon,"_ she said.

"Gotcha," Gin said and hung up on her, letting a feral grin steal over his features. "I can hardly wait," he murmured to himself.

"Aniki, why didn't you ask her about Sherry? You know that whatever she told you was probably a lie."

"Oh, I know that very well, Vodka," Gin reassured him. "But she can't so easily lie to my face without suffering some very unpleasant consequences. Vodka, whatever I do to that woman, you better not try and stop me. This has been a _long_ time coming."

Vodka looked uncomfortable, but nodded slowly. "Just _try_ not to kill her, no matter what she tells you. She _is_ still a human being."

Gin grimaced and rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'll try to restrain myself if it comes to that. You'll have to drive though since I'll have to interrogate her in the car. It's getting too light out to do it in a place as public as a phone booth."

"We'll switch when we reach her?"

He nodded. "That will be easiest."

Silence fell between them once more as they drove along the city streets. Vodka kept fidgeting with the mask still in his hands while Gin considered his approach to dealing with Vermouth. Sherry's whereabouts and well-being were of course his biggest concern, but getting Vermouth to admit she'd done anything to his woman might prove challenging, especially if she thought he wouldn't do anything to her that would risk getting blood in his car. He honestly hoped he wouldn't have to, but if it was necessary to get the truth of Sherry's welfare out of her, he would do it. He also wondered what had happened to Vermouth that she wasn't able to move well at the moment.

The American woman hadn't said where she was along Interstate 20, so once they were on it, he and Vodka both had to keep a lookout for telephone booths. Despite their awareness, they still almost missed her. Only Vodka's frantic shout and pointing alerted him in time to pull over to the curb and stop. When she said she was in a phone booth, he thought she'd be standing, not _lying down_. Both men in black got out of the car and Vodka moved to the other side while Gin crossed the road to the phone booth Vermouth was sitting in. She smiled and waved when she saw him, but didn't make any move to stand. He understood why once he was standing just outside the booth. On top of the three broken ribs she'd mentioned over the phone, she was bleeding from a wound in her right thigh. It didn't look serious enough to prevent her from walking a little, but she obviously wasn't originally shot here either, so she'd exhausted her energy reserves to get away from the site of the shooting and reach a phone. What had happened to hers?

"You're quite a sight for sore eyes, but as you've likely already deduced, I don't have the strength to walk anywhere under my own power, so would you be a dear and help carry me to your car?" she said sweetly.

Gin narrowed his eyes but said nothing and moved into the telephone booth with her. He grabbed one of her arms and threw it over his shoulder, then hoisted the injured woman off the ground to let her lean against him. It looked like he was going to get blood in his car anyway. They slowly made their way across the street back to the idling Porsche and Gin helped Vermouth into the back seat of his car then followed after her, much to her surprise.

He slammed the door behind him and said, "Vodka, drive."

"Where?"

"Somewhere without witnesses."

Vodka nodded and pulled back onto the Interstate. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vermouth give him an arched look and rest her chin on her hand, her arm propped up on her uninjured leg. "Oh? Now Gin, you're not planning on abducting me to make martini, are you? How scandalous! What would your dear kitten say if she found out?"

"Where is she?" Gin said sharply as if she hadn't spoken at all.

"Who?"

"Sherry. Where is Sherry?" he repeated in the same brisk tone. His lips barely moved and it was taking everything he had not to lose his self-control.

"How should I know where that little kitten of yours is? She's in hiding for her own protection, is she not? Don't tell me you actually managed to lose track of her!" Vermouth replied easily with a slight laugh in her voice.

The remaining threads of his fraying patience snapped.

His gun was out and pointed straight at her head in less than a second. He briefly registered the shock on her face, but he couldn't even enjoy it. "Don't you dare fucking lie to me, Vermouth," he growled low in his throat. "Your blood's already staining the inside of my car and I won't hesitate to spill even more of it if I have to."

The shock had disappeared from Vermouth's eyes and she was now back to wearing her normal poker face, but for once, she remained silent.

"I know exactly where Sherry _wasn't_ this evening. She was not at Dr. Agasa's house. Nobody was. Her phone was on, but not on her person. I found it in the basement which showed plenty of evidence that Sherry was both sick and had been resting in that room earlier that day. I also found evidence that the basement door had been locked and she'd picked the lock open to get out. There is only one reason why Sherry had been locked in the basement and then broken out even though she's sick: to prevent her from seeking out Shinichi Kudo to prevent _him_ from being killed for protecting her from _you_."

Vermouth laughed. "That's quite an imagination you have there, Gin, but do you have any proof that I was anywhere near Shinichi Kudo or Sherry, much less intended to kill one or the other?"

His right hand lashed out and grabbed her by the throat, choking off her cruel laugh and he slammed her against the inside wall of his car. A choked gasp of pain escaped her and he moved forward, pinning her with his body to the interior wall with his gun pressing directly into her temple. Their noses were only inches apart and their breathing was heavy, hers from pain and his from fury.

"Do not mistake me for those FBI dogs you stupidly allowed to catch our scent again," Gin said in a deadly whisper with perfect articulation. "I have no fear of risking the wrath of 'that person' for killing his favorite without any evidence of foul play. I called Sherry's phone four times last night and even left her a message. If she's alive, then I will find out directly from her exactly what happened. I _will_ find out what happened to her last night, one way or another. It's entirely up to you whether I preemptively kill you now on the chance that you _did_ kill her, or whether you tell me the truth of what I want to know and _maybe_ you won't die."

Vermouth clawed at his fingers on her throat, trying to speak, and he eased the tension in his fingers just a smidge. She drew a loud, audible breath of air and glared hatefully up at him. "So if the truth turns out to be that I _did_ kill your precious _Sherry_ , you'll still kill me? Is that it?" she spat.

Gin gave her his best, worst grin. It was a rare treat to get under Vermouth's skin like this. "More or less, but I quite enjoy this side of you, Vermouth. That expression suits you."

A half-strangled chuckle escaped her and her glare changed to a similar evil smirk. "You're looking quite hot, yourself, right now," she said. "You're as ruthless as you've always been, _Jynnan Tonnyx_. Does Sherry know just how awful a person you truly are? That stupid girl's affections are wasted on someone like you."

He pressed the Beretta even harder into her temple and gave her throat a warning squeeze. "Last chance, Vermouth," he said darkly. "If the next words out of your mouth aren't the true explanation of what occurred last night and what happened to Sherry, then you better pray there's an afterlife that will accept you, because my car's about to be painted red with your blood."

Her light blue eyes gazed intently into his green ones with a shrewd, calculating expression. He kept his finger tensed on the trigger and met her stare unflinchingly. She was weighing her options, testing his resolve...

She finally smirked. "Your jailbait's still alive, though not for lack of trying. I called her out of the house disguised as one Dr. Araide, but she instead got into the car of that FBI woman I mentioned to you earlier, the one who apparently has a twenty-year-old vendetta against me, Jodie Starling. I followed them out to the shipping containers by the docks and incapacitated that woman. She had arranged a trap for me, but I was aware of the FBI tailing me and foiled that plan of hers in advance before I even made the call to Dr. Agasa's. However, the little girl who had been in the car with Ms. Starling wasn't Sherry, but Shinichi disguised as her."

Amusement filtered into her eyes and she chuckled quietly. "I hadn't expected that, for I'd also been keeping tabs on what was taking place on the ship and he seemed to be there working to solve the case as I had intended. He had me in a bind for a moment there and as I was trying to figure out what to do next, your lady love arrived on the scene. I rather think she thought I'd kill her precious Conan for standing in my way. If she was locked up as you said, then she must have been quite desperate to escape, perhaps couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to him?"

She was goading him, trying to make him jealous, but Gin refused to play her game. Still, it took every ounce of self-control he possessed not to pull the trigger just to make her shut up.

Vermouth continued relentlessly, "Shinichi was flabbergasted and her appearance was enough of a distraction for me to put him to sleep with his own wristwatch. You should be proud, Gin. Your little girl was so brave facing me in such a pathetic state with no means to defend herself. She did not beg or plead or cry, but stood tall with a woman's dignity and offered me a deal: her life in exchange for not harming anyone else. Such a sweet, stupid girl. She was my only target and I had no intention of hurting anyone else, not even her beloved Conan whom she risked her life to protect, so naturally, I accepted her deal. Sherry would have died right then and there were it not for another unexpected turn of events. Miss. Ran Mouri jumped out of Starling's trunk and ran to Sherry. She threw herself at her and pinned her to the ground using her own body as a shield to protect her. I could not kill Sherry without hurting Ran and I had no intention of doing so. That woman is the only reason that yours is still alive right now. The situation only spiraled even further out of control after that. Starling had gotten her second wind and Shuichi Akai arrived on the scene as well. I only escaped arrest without more serious injuries because I used Conan as a hostage and blew up the other car. I got away, but I'm afraid I underestimated Conan yet again and accidentally gave away the tones for the Boss's phone number while he was conscious. I knocked him out with sleeping gas, shot myself in the leg to remain awake, and managed to make my way to the phone booth you picked me up from. Now… does that explanation satisfy you, Gin?"

Gin glared at her silently, but lowered his gun from her temple and released his grip on her neck. He didn't doubt that there was more to the story that she hadn't bothered to mention, but this one had the ring of authenticity this time. "For now," he said slowly and holstered his gun in the shoulder harness hidden beneath his coat, "but you tried to kill Sherry. I will never forget nor forgive you for that."

Without a word to either of the two occupants in the car, Gin climbed between the seats back into the front and pulled out a cigarette from a newly-opened pack. He slotted it between his teeth and lit it with the car lighter. He inhaled deeply, letting the familiar burn and the chemical pleasure seep into his system before exhaling a thick cloud of smoke. It dissipated from view, but the smell still lingered, just as the night's events were finally over, but the consequences of them still remained in effect.

()()()()()

Haibara, along with Ran and Miss. Jodie, had been admitted to the hospital first thing in the morning. She and Ran were only checked over to make sure they had not suffered any serious injuries, but Miss. Jodie was in surgery to remove the bullet lodged in her gut and repair any other internal injuries she may have suffered as a result of the penetration. However, the doctors had reassured them that Miss. Jodie would be fine, and though there was some concern for Haibara's persistent fever, the doctors told her it was nothing that couldn't be cured with bed rest and they were sent home before noon. A quick phone call with Dr. Agasa revealed that Kudo was alive and safe and it was decided that he would drop Conan off at the Mouri residence if the Mouris could drop her off at his place. Haibara had heard Conan protest this over the phone, saying he wanted to stay with the Professor a little longer, but she and Ran had both been in agreement over the arrangements. Haibara was sure that after the scare of last night, Ran didn't want him out of her sight for longer than he had to. Haibara's reason was equally-selfish for a whole different reason. She knew perfectly well how Kudo felt about suicides and although he had been asleep for that part of the conflict, he would have easily figured out by now what she had tried to do. She did not need to hear him lecturing her right now about how stupid she was for trying to throw her life away.

So it was one uneventful car ride with the Mouris and Sonoko later that Haibara found herself back at Dr. Agasa's house like she _hadn't_ left that evening thinking she would never come back to it. She silently opened the front gate and walked up the path to the door, which she unlocked and let herself in. After everything that happened and staring death in the face, it seemed… so surreal. Everything still looked the same as before, but at the same time, it didn't. Or was it only her perception of it that was different? She had nearly died last night- _would_ have died were it not for Ran's completely unexpected appearance. Shouldn't everything have changed?

She shook her head free of those thoughts and coughed again. It would probably take even longer to recover from her cold now. With a heavy sigh, she descended back down to the basement. She'd left the door open when she left, so she doubted it would be a better place to recuperate than anywhere else in the house, but at least the humidifier would be more effective in a small, enclosed space. The door was still open and the light still on, just as she left it. She had just entered the room when her right foot kicked something. Looking down, she saw it was the screwdriver she had used to force her way out. Haibara frowned slightly as she picked it up and examined it curiously. She had been so worried about getting out and reaching Kudo that she couldn't remember what she'd done with the tool after she'd gotten the door open, but had she really left it in the middle of the walkway?

Without sparing it another thought, she carried it back to the desk where she had retrieved it and spotted her phone lying there on the edge. Right, she'd left it behind in her haste to get out. She placed the screwdriver back in the drawer and picked up her phone to stuff it in her pocket when she paused and stared at the phone cover screen in confusion. Four missed calls and a voicemail after she left? Who had tried calling her so late last night? She flipped open the phone and gasped. All four calls were from the same person and the number was Gin's. Bewilderment surged through her. What had happened? Why had he called? Gin _knew_ not to call her and had obeyed that request the entire time that she had been Ai Haibara! Quickly, she opened her voicemail and played the message he'd left her:

 _/Hey Sherry, it's me. I know I'm not supposed to call you, but I need to know what's going on with Kudo tonight. Please get back to me soon. Stay safe, love. Bye./_

The message ended and Haibara stared blankly ahead with a growing sense of horror. He knew. Gin had somehow found out that something was going on last night and suspected Vermouth was involved. Nothing else would have made him desperate enough to disobey her request for him to not call her. Without a second's hesitation, she redialed his cell and chewed on her lower lip as she waited for him to pick up.

A click. _"Sherry? Is that you?"_ Gin's voice asked.

" _Yes!_ Yes, it's me!" she said with a relieved laugh. "I'm sorry I didn't answer earlier. I didn't have my phone on me. I only just got home and saw that you had called and left a message."

" _My god, you're alive,"_ he said and his voice sounded weak with relief.

Haibara's brow furrowed slightly. "Yes, I'm alive. Why would you…?" she faltered as a thought came to her unbidden. No. No, he couldn't possibly know _that_ much, could he? "Why would you say something like that?" she finished uncertainly.

" _I had a bad feeling about last night. Vermouth was on the move and I was suspicious, so I sent Vodka to keep tabs on this off-season Halloween party that took place last night, as I'm sure you're aware. Vermouth wasn't there and neither was Kudo. I called you on the slight chance that you would know if Kudo was setting a trap for the Organization or if there was something more serious afoot, but you didn't answer,"_ his voice dropped to subzero. _"I was there, Sherry. I was there, at your house, and you weren't. I broke in and found your phone. I saw you had been locked in that basement and I saw that you had broken out of it. Do you think I couldn't figure out what that meant?"_

Haibara gulped, but didn't answer him. She had feared what he would do when he found out she was killed, but after her incredible survival, she'd hoped that meant he wouldn't even hear of her near-brush with death. The very lecture she'd hoped to avoid from Kudo, she was getting from Gin instead and it was worse, so much worse.

" _Sherry… did you, or did you not, try to sacrifice your life to Vermouth to prevent her from hurting anyone else?"_ Gin demanded, his voice trembling with icy anger.

Haibara's eyes widened in shock. "How did you-?"

" _-Vermouth was too injured from the fight that ensued to do anything more than escape and call for me to come get her,"_ he snapped. _"I did so and interrogated her on what happened last night under pain of death and she confessed what seemed to be the truth for once. Your reaction confirms that what she said was true. Damn it, Sherry, what the hell were you thinking?!"_

Her temper flared up in an instant. "I was thinking I was trying to save Kudo from being killed by Vermouth!" she retorted. "Because unlike _some_ people, I have issues with letting innocent people get killed on my behalf!" As soon as the words left her mouth, she instantly regretted them and she heard the line go dead quiet on the other end. "I'm sorry…" she whispered.

" _Oh, are you?"_ Gin said coldly.

Desperation clawed at her insides. "Gin, I didn't mean it!"

" _It didn't sound like it."_

"Damn it, Gin, please!" she begged. "I'm sick, I'm emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted, I have a headache, and I nearly _died_ last night! I'm not in my right mind and I just can't deal with this kind of thing right now."

Gin remained silent for several beats, but then he finally spoke and she heard the resigned weariness in his tone. _"You don't get to make me promise to not get killed only to throw your own life away like it's nothing. You were Vermouth's only target last night. She had no intention of hurting anyone else, so your attempt to protect Kudo was a wasted effort."_

The same shame she had felt last night coursed through her once more and she unhappily curled up around herself with the phone still pressed against her ear. Gin was upset with her and she had nearly died for nothing.

" _Why don't you tell me what happened last night from your perspective?"_ Gin offered kindly after a moment's silence. _"That way I can corroborate what Vermouth told me with the truth and start filling in the pieces of the story I'm sure she purposefully left out."_

Haibara nodded weakly. "Okay," she said quietly and began to recount the events of last night that she had been witness to, including her escape from the basement and arriving at the scene by taxi. When she got to the part where Ran appeared out of the trunk and Calvados started shooting at her, he stopped her abruptly.

" _Calvados? Calvados was there? For how long?"_

"Uh, yes, he was there. I guess he was probably there from the very beginning, but I wasn't aware of him until Ran appeared," Haibara said.

" _And you're sure he was shooting_ _ **at**_ _Miss. Mouri and not something else?"_ he questioned.

She wanted to make a snippy comment along the lines of knowing how to tell what a shooter's intended target was, but she was too tired to follow through and the intensity of which Gin was asking her about Calvados was more worrying. "No, he was definitely aiming for Ran. Did Vermouth say he was shooting at something else instead?"

" _Vermouth didn't even mention he was present,"_ Gin said in a low voice.

An icy shiver ran down her spine. "What does that mean?" she asked.

" _I'm not quite sure yet, but oftentimes what Vermouth_ _ **doesn't**_ _say has far more significance than what she_ _ **does**_ _."_

"You're not aware of Calvados having any grudges against me, are you?"

" _No, I think he was fairly indifferent to you, though he liked your spunk. I heard him jokingly comment once that if we weren't careful, you'd end up just like Chianti. I'll have to look into this matter. Please continue."_

There wasn't much more left to tell after that, but she finished the rest of the story as she knew it anyway. She could tell Gin was thinking over everything she'd said. Calvados's involvement and his absence from Vermouth's retelling really bothered him.

"I might have more information later about what happened whenever I see Kudo again," she piped up. "He won't be able to tell me what happened at the very end when we were both unconscious, but he'll undoubtedly give me the details of what happened on his end because he'll want to know what happened on mine, and his new contact with one of the FBI agents may be able to help with the final piece of the fight that forced Vermouth to finally flee."

" _Alright, I'll see if I can find out what's going on with Calvados and how he's involved in this mess."_

"Just make sure you don't let slip that I'm your girlfriend," Haibara warned.

" _I know better, don't worry about that. I suppose I'll be hearing from you sooner than usual then,"_ he said.

"Yes, probably tomorrow if I have my way," she agreed.

" _Oh, and one more thing. Vermouth mentioned that Kudo now knows the tones for 'that person's' phone number, but he doesn't know the significance of that connection yet, so don't be too surprised if he mentions it to you when you see him. Take care, Sherry."_

"Take care, Gin, and… thank you for looking out for me," Haibara said softly.

"… _I only wish I could do more. Goodbye,"_ he said wearily and hung up.

"Bye..." she sighed and closed her phone with a loud snap.

* * *

 _What exactly is the significance of Calvados's involvement in the plot to kill Sherry? That will be revealed in the next chapter featuring the episode "Black Impact".  
_

 _Also, I have no idea what Haibara actually used to unlock the basement door since I couldn't get a good look at the tool, so I just chose a screwdriver at random. Let's pretend that would actually work. :P_


	7. Black Impact

**Author's Note: Holy crap, this chapter is long, even by my standards: over 20,000 words and 40 pages on my word document! I'm legitimately shocked. I knew the episode 'Black Impact' was my favorite Black Organization moment and the episode was 2.5 hours (I think?), but I didn't realize it would get this long anyway!  
**

 **I did something slightly different with this chapter. In all previous chapters, Gin and Sherry have been the only characters from whose perspectives this story has been told so far. For this chapter, since I had too many characters acting independently of one another that could offer some unique perspectives on this AU, I decided to let as many characters as I felt were necessary speak their minds. POV shifts follow all of my standard break symbols: '()()()()()'.**

 **When writing this, I mostly followed the anime episode, but I also used some pieces and staging from the manga (there are only some slight differences). The episode is 425, "Black Impact! The Moment the Organization Reaches Out", and the last couple scenes take place just after "The Super Secret Road to School" (427-428) since they occurred about a week after the last run-in with the Organization.  
**

* * *

Black Impact

Gin tapped idly against the steering wheel of his Porsche while he read over a bulleted list on a small strip of paper scribbled in his own handwriting. He glared at the last item then put the whole paper in the ash tray and set fire to it with the cigarette he had been smoking previously. He watched the flickering orange flames curl and wrinkle the paper until it was nothing more than ash, then sighed and propped his left arm against the door frame to gaze outside. The promised forecast of a torrential downpour in the evening had been unfortunately accurate and visibility outside was nearly zero. He was not looking forward to driving back home in this, not the least because heavy rain increased the likelihood of some idiot losing control of their car and crashing into his. Unfortunately, he had a meeting with someone tonight and it was important enough that it was not worth rescheduling due to inclement weather.

As a high-ranking operative of the Men in Black, he _had_ an office in the Japanese headquarters, but he was hardly ever there. Excepting his rank, he was a field agent in every sense of the word, out on the frontlines ready to bring in any unruly aliens threatening the safety of humanity and the secrecy of the Organization. His car was more of an office than the empty, sterile room that had his codename on it.

The rain was pounding so heavily on the roof of his car that he almost didn't hear the sound of someone knocking on the opposite window. He glanced over and made out a figure dressed in a bright yellow raincoat that waved at him. Gin unlocked the passenger door and no sooner had he done so that the person in the yellow raincoat opened the door and slid neatly into the seat next to him. As soon as the door shut, the person next to him gasped and pulled back the hood. Long nearly-black hair pulled back into a ponytail shook free of the hood and the sharp-angled clear blue eyes of the Organization's CIA liaison stared at him with the heartfelt relief of a drowning person being saved. She looked like she could have been drowning. Even with the raincoat on, she was still completely soaked.

"Thank you so much," Kir breathed and flopped against the seat with a wet squelch that made him wince. "I couldn't find my umbrella anywhere as I was leaving work today. I think I must have left it at home, so I was glad I at least had the raincoat. Sorry that I'm getting the inside of your car all wet."

"Can't be helped," he grunted. "I need you for an assignment in about a week."

Kir turned her head lazily and glanced at him. "Alright, what kind of assignment?"

"The 'Black Organization' kind."

At this, Kir sat up straighter and her gaze sharpened with alert interest. "Oh? You've been given permission to create a scenario for Shinichi Kudo?"

"Yes, it's been long enough since his encounter with Vermouth that 'that person' agrees now would be a good time to create a situation of our own choosing for him to pursue without risking him interfering in true MiB matters."

"I see, and you want me to assist in this scenario?" she asked.

Gin nodded. "You already live and work in the Tokyo area as a news reporter; it would not be difficult to concoct a situation where he would be forced to interact with you."

"I see. Well then, who else will be involved in this scenario you have in mind?"

"Of the codenamed, myself and Vodka, naturally," he said, counting off members on his fingers. "Chianti, Korn… and Vermouth."

Kir's brow furrowed, but her eyes widened in surprise. "Vermouth? But wasn't she-?"

"-The one who attempted to kill Sherry and forced Calvados to commit suicide all in one night?" Gin interrupted bitterly. "Yeah, she is. I didn't want to, but 'that person' forced me to include her as a back-up plan."

When silence met his words, he glanced at Kir out of the corner of his eye. She looked troubled and he assumed it was about Vermouth's potential involvement. It was almost a wonder that Vermouth had stayed alive as long as she had with so many other women in the Organization disliking her.

"Don't worry," he reassured the CIA agent and squeezed her shoulder. "If she tries to get any more agents killed, I'll put a bullet in her first."

Kir gave him a small smile. "You're supposed to uphold the principles of lawful order and justice, not resort to criminal methods," she scolded lightly.

Gin shrugged and removed his hand. "I uphold the principles of alien lawful order and justice," he retorted. "By their standards, it's not criminal to preemptively eliminate a known fatal threat to that which you cherish."

Kir laughed slightly, "I'm afraid we will still continue to disagree on that score, Gin. You're fortunate 'that person' allows you as much leeway as he does."

"Only because I'm too skilled at what I do for him to be able to afford to get rid of me," Gin said.

"You're still fortunate. The American branch would never accept such behavior regardless," she said firmly.

Gin conceded the point. "Perhaps, but I'd just have to take your word on that, wouldn't I?"

"Indeed," Kir agreed with a smile. "Now what's involved in this plan of yours for Mr. Kudo?"

And so, under the cover of darkness and the pouring rain like thunder over their heads, Gin elaborated on the details of the plan he had concocted for Shinichi Kudo and filled Kir in on her specific role, for she had the difficult job of luring Kudo into their web without him realizing he'd stumbled across another member of the Black Organization on purpose.

By the time he'd finished telling her all the details, Kir's eyes were wide with awe. "Wow, you've really thought of everything for this plan, haven't you? I'm impressed," she said.

Gin gave her a wry smile and shook his head. "You haven't met Shinichi Kudo in-person yet. This level of thorough detail is necessary where he's concerned, otherwise he'll sniff out the weak thread in the yarn and expose us for what we _truly_ are."

"Well, it's certainly a lot to take in. I'll see what I can do about getting Detective Mouri to the TV station. I'm certain that once he's there, I can arrange to meet him and prepare a setup for Mr. Kudo like you envision. Is there anything else you need from me this evening?" she asked.

"No, this will suffice. Remember, your role is the critical setup phase, but the scenario for everyone else begins at 10:00 AM next week on Saturday," Gin warned.

"Yes, I understand, and if it's not too much to ask, would you be able to drive me home since the rain doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon?"

"Only if you don't complain about me smoking," he warned as he pulled a cigarette out of the pack with his teeth.

She eyed it with distaste while he turned on the car lighter. "As if I'm stupid enough to complain about your poor health choices when the alternative is being tossed out in that," she said with a sweep of her hand to indicate the downpour outside.

"Good enough," he muttered and lit the end of the cigarette. Kir made a face and coughed when he exhaled the smoke, but true to her word, she didn't complain about it.

He dropped her off at her apartment complex and she dashed out into the rain for the shelter of the building, visible as nothing more than a yellow blur. Ordinarily he preferred to wait and make sure people he was dropping off actually enter the place they were supposed to, but the weather made that impossible, so he drove off and started heading back home. Kir knew the most about the scenario because of the nature of her role, but he had not told her _everything_. There was one aspect of the plan he was playing _very_ close to the vest that not even Vodka knew of. The last time that Kudo had faced off against the 'Black Organization', he'd come away from it exposing Vermouth, gaining contact with the FBI, and learning the tones for 'that person's' email. What they'd received in exchange was the FBI's increased interest in their movements in Japan and the loss of one of their own.

Suicide. Calvados had been present at the scene of Vermouth's dockside showdown with the FBI and Shinichi Kudo and she had completely failed to mention that when he interrogated her. It was only due to Kudo's new tentative connection with the FBI and Sherry's connection with him that they were able to learn what had become of Calvados. He had committed suicide after Vermouth had escaped the docks and blown up the car she'd originally arrived in, and Gin just couldn't stop thinking about it.

If the Organization really _was_ a secret crime syndicate, then it would make perfect sense for him to commit suicide, but they _weren't_. They _weren't_ a criminal organization and no cover story was worth someone's life to protect. There were so many other options he could have taken. He could have easily wiped the memories of the FBI agents to make them forget he was there before they tried to take him into custody, so why had he decided to kill himself instead? It didn't even fit with what he remembered about the man's personality. Gin hadn't known Calvados all that well, but Chianti and Korn had, and they had flat-out refused to believe Calvados had killed himself when he'd told them what happened to their partner. Chianti had screamed and sworn at him that Calvados would never ever commit suicide, to which Korn had agreed, though much less vocally. They were so adamant, in fact, that they convinced themselves instead that Vermouth had personally killed him herself before making her escape from the FBI.

While Gin was by no means in the same state of denial as Chianti and Korn about their partner's death, he couldn't deny that there was something irrevocably _wrong_ about it, and the more he'd pondered over it, the more he'd wondered if Vermouth was somehow responsible for that wrongness. So along with giving Kudo something to do and testing the FBI's responses to their actions, he had designed another layer of the scenario as a test for Vermouth, because if Gin was forced to be completely honest with himself, Calvados's suicide threw up far more red flags than Vermouth's attempted murder of Sherry.

()()()()()

"Thanks for agreeing to come clothes shopping with me, Yoko. I'm sorry that I didn't give you much notice before springing it upon you," Kir said as she picked out a lavender blouse with a lace lining and held it up against her chest.

"It's fine, it's fine, Rena," the idol said with a laugh. "It's fun getting out and doing normal things like this. Besides, I hardly see you anymore since you switched to the Sunday Evening News, and- Oh!" Yoko's cheerful face had appeared from behind a rack of dresses and alighted on the shirt Kir was still holding up. "Rena, that looks so cute! You should definitely try it on!" she said excitedly.

"Really? You think so?" Kir asked, slightly bemused.

"Yes, definitely! In fact, you should try these on too!" she said, throwing another set of shirts and some skirts at her. "And while you're doing that, I'll try on these cute sundresses!"

Kir took a quick look at the dresses, both with long full skirts down to the knees and with various quantities of pink, and smiled gently at the multi-talented actress and singer. "I'm sure they'll look even more adorable with you wearing them, Yoko," she said sincerely and gestured to the back of the store with her head. "Come on, the changing rooms are this way."

She led the way to the back and they took the clothes they wanted to try on into their respective stalls. Kir set the clothes down on the bench then stood tall and closed her eyes, listening intently to the surrounding noises to determine if she and Yoko were the only ones in the changing room at the moment. She slowly opened her sharp-angled eyes. They were. She reached into the inside pocket of the jacket she wore and withdrew a shiny metal cylinder about 20 centimeters long (8 inches) with a black knob and a red light at the top. She stared at it loosely in her hand for a moment then closed her fingers around the device.

"Yoko, I somehow seem to have gotten my hair caught on one of these shirts and I can't get unstuck, could you come in here and help me out for a quick moment?" Kir called to her friend in the next stall over.

"Yes, absolutely, hold on," Yoko replied immediately.

Kir moved to stand at the back of the changing room and put on the sunglasses that had been in the same pocket as the cylindrical device. She turned the dial on it to the lowest setting, then held it up so that the red light faced away from her. She waited. As soon as Yoko's face pushed past the curtain and her eyes locked on the object in her hands, Kir pressed the button and a quick flash of bright light filled the changing room. The confused expression that had begun to appear on Yoko's face quickly faded away into a trance-like expression.

Kir took off the sunglasses and spoke to the susceptible Yoko with quiet, but unyielding authority, "I did not ask you to come into my changing room and help me with a shirt getting caught on my hair and you did not leave your own stall the entire time you've been in here. You decided you were only going to buy one of the sundresses you walked into the changing room with and after that, you were going to call Detective Kogoro Mouri to invite him to join you on Yoko Okino's 4 Minute Cooking Show on Morning Live 7 this Friday. I also just told you that I've been dealing with a bell-ringing prank every Saturday for the past two months."

The dazed look didn't leave Yoko's normally excited blue eyes, but she obediently marched back to her changing room without protest and Kir listened as Yoko put on one of the dresses she'd picked to try out. She repocketed the neuralyzer and the sunglasses in her jacket pocket and released a quiet sigh. She hoped it worked; the neuralyzer's primary function was memory erasure and the hypnotic state afterward was only a secondary effect. She would find out soon enough. While she waited for Yoko, she tried on the lavender blouse with the lace that she had originally picked out. It looked good on her, so she decided to buy it. Maybe she would even wear it on Friday when she met Detective Mouri.

She heard Yoko finishing up next door and decided not to try on the other clothes. Kir planned her exit from the changing room at the same time that Yoko left hers. Yoko still seemed a little dazed, but more like herself at least.

"Rena, are you all done too?" she asked.

"Yes, I decided to go with the lavender blouse I found; I thought the other clothes didn't really suit me all that well," she said with an apologetic smile for her friend.

"Aww, that's too bad," Yoko said. "I decided I'm going to buy this dress here!"

Somehow, Kir was not surprised that it was the one with the most pink in it. "I think that's an excellent choice, Yoko," she said.

"Thanks, Rena," Yoko beamed. "Oh, I just had a wonderful idea! Why don't I invite Detective Mouri to join me for my Cooking Show on Morning Live 7 this Friday! I'll call him right now!"

Kir watched in wide-eyed amazement as the pop star pulled out her phone and dialed Detective Mouri's phone number then overheard her invite him on the show for this Friday.

'Incredible!' she thought, 'The neuralyzers _can_ be used to make people act on suggested directives. I wonder if Gin knows about this.'

Yoko snapped the phone shut, ending the conversation, and turned to Kir. "Good news, Rena, Detective Mouri said he could come. Since it's a national holiday, his daughter, Ran, and Conan might also come and I can introduce you to the three of them."

"Oh, Yoko, there's really no need for that," Kir said with a slight wave of her hand.

"No, I insist. Detective Mouri's really quite the gentleman. Besides, it would be the perfect time to ask him about that bell-ringing prank you told me about. I can't believe you didn't tell anyone about it sooner, Rena!" she scolded, though the attempt was rather cute coming from her.

Kir sweat-dropped. She had a feeling she might regret planting _that_ idea into Yoko's brain more than anything else. Yes, someone had been ringing her bell for the past two months, but nothing more had come of it, so she wasn't too worried. Oh well. At least she'd only have to deal with Yoko's kind-natured persistence of the matter until the end of the week.

()()()()()

"Aniki, are you sure about this?" Vodka asked as he followed slightly behind his partner down one of the many darkly-lit hallways in the basement levels of headquarters.

"Of course," Gin replied. "The room was booked by Kinta Chinro. It's an anagram of 'Chianti' and 'Korn' combined. It's the name they use when they don't want anyone to know what they're doing. The other evidence is that they checked out the required equipment under the same name for a time period that overlaps with the time the room is currently unavailable."

"But how did _you_ figure this out? I wouldn't have thought you cared enough about their movements to investigate this deeply."

Gin turned slightly and Vodka was just barely able to make out his partner's smirk in the dark. "I didn't. Sherry told me about it in passing once. For being a loud-mouthed, domineering, vulgar woman, Chianti's surprisingly fond of Sherry and let her in on the secret one day."

"And I guess Chianti didn't tell her to keep it to herself?"

"Nope."

As they approached the balcony-like open platform at the end of the hallway that looked out onto the light interactive virtual reality space, Vodka snickered to himself. "Who'd have ever thought Chianti and Korn would be such huge gaming nerds?"

Gin stuck his hands in his coat pockets and walked out onto the platform. "In hindsight, it's not that surprising," he said, looking up.

Vodka followed his line of sight and saw two raised cranes in the center of the room with two platforms carrying one person wielding a sniper rifle on each. Chianti was picking up her weapon of choice from where it had been resting against the rail and the VR environmental simulation technology instantly created a vast cityscape in full night. There was even a moderately strong, chilly breeze blowing through the VR space. Vodka let out an impressed whistle. This was _much_ more advanced than the moving plastic cutouts and flashing spotlights _he'd_ faced in the Men in Black agent recruitment tests. He looked down and saw that Chianti was aiming her rifle at a suited old man on a fast-moving train. She fired and in a single instant, the virtual bullet pierced the window and struck the target in the head. He slumped forward and even the book he was reading tumbled to the ground from his hands.

"600 yards, clear," Chianti said after raising her weapon and the cityscape instantly vanished. "Alright, Korn, 650 yards is next. Think you can do it?"

"Yes," Korn said and raised his rifle to his eyes.

Once again, the VR tech activated and this time, the VR space was in a stadium complete with blazing white lights and screaming crowds. The giant tuning forks at the ends of the field and the helmeted players with large shoulder pads told Vodka that it was an American football game and he looked around to find the target. He wasn't really sure what kind of game Chianti and Korn were playing, but he guessed they were taking turns shooting the same guy at increasingly-longer distances to see who could shoot him the farthest. Vodka eventually found the same suited old man from before sitting in the top box seats. Those were incredibly expensive and there were even some men in black suits with dark sunglasses nearby. Had they intentionally chosen for their victim to be a high-profile target or had it been randomized? Korn shot, but missed the target by several inches, the bullet leaving a smoking hole in the chair just to the left of his ear.

Korn looked surprised, which probably meant he was flabbergasted if he was showing that much emotion and Chianti laughed loudly. "Too bad. I'll clear it," she said smugly and raised her rifle to take a turn at the target again. "This win's mine."

She took a brief moment to find the target in her scope and he saw her smirk in the brighter lighting. "Heh, I got it," she said and fired.

Her shot went further astray than Korn's. It went even further to the left than Korn's had flown to the right and wasn't even in-line with the target's head. In fact, it flew so low, the bullet caught the popcorn container on the arm of the chair instead. Chianti stared at the spot she'd hit in surprise, much like Korn had, then clicked her tongue in annoyance at the miss. The stadium disappeared and a flat neon screen appeared before them with their respective scores. Chianti appeared to have won that game since she had the most points.

"So how many times did you kill that one man?" Gin suddenly called out to the two of them.

Korn stiffened like a board while Chianti shrieked and whirled around. "You!" she exclaimed, pointing at Gin, "What the fuck- No, _why_ the fuck are you two here?!"

"I could care less about blackmailing you over your gaming hobby, if that's what you're worried about," Gin said wearily, forestalling any preemptive accusations on Chianti's part. "We'll be waiting for you two in the VR generator room. There's work to do."

Gin turned on his heel to walk back out and Vodka followed after him. Once they were back in the dark hallway, Vodka muttered, "There's a separate VR generator room?"

"Of course," Gin said. "The light fixtures have to be present directly in the room to be effective, but the rest of it, the sounds, smells, and weather patterns are all generated from elsewhere."

"Oh. I'm glad you know all this random important stuff, Aniki," he said, smiling at Gin.

"Hmph, the curse of a mind that has a tendency to remember the most random and obscure facts," Gin muttered and they continued walking down the hallway, but turned left into a side passage. The end of that short stretch of hallway led to a staircase.

Like the rest of the hall, the stairwell was incredibly dark, especially with his sunglasses still on. The footlights at the ends of each step were the only reason Vodka didn't misstep and knock into Gin. "Are the lights just not working in this area or did headquarters forget to install the rest of them?" Vodka groused as they descended further and further down.

"Neither. Since this section of headquarters is not a high-traffic area, they only installed a minimal amount of lighting for the people that _do_ come down here," Gin said, his tone annoyed.

"Heh, what do you know; a secret alien immigration headquarters being stingy about saving money on electricity," Vodka muttered in amusement. "If these basement levels don't scream 'perfect illegal alien hiding place', then I don't know what will."

"Well, in the event of an infiltration, the basement levels are supposed to be sealed off so no one can get in or out, but as far as how effective they would be against a true alien infiltration, that hasn't been tested yet," Gin said.

They finally reached the bottom of the stairwell and Gin opened the door which led out into a room so much brighter than the one they'd just been in that Vodka had to squint his eyes, even with the sunglasses on. There were only two directions to go: left or right. The end of the left fork had a door with a sign that said 'Virtual Reality Room' and the door at the end of the right fork had a sign that said 'Virtual Reality Equipment and Generator Room: Authorized Personnel Only'. They turned right and pushed open the door. Chianti and Korn were already sitting in chairs next to each other waiting for them. Chianti had both her arms and legs crossed and Korn had his hands clasped together resting on his knees.

Chianti smirked at them upon arrival. "Hmph, took you two long enough. Did you get lost getting down here or something?"

To no surprise of Vodka's, Gin didn't respond to Chianti's baiting remark and instead took a seat in one of the chair's opposite her and Korn. Vodka dragged a fourth closer and sat down next to his partner.

"I'm recruiting the both of you for a 'Black Organization' mission this Saturday," Gin said to the two sharpshooters without preamble.

That got their interest immediately. "Ooh, sounds exciting!" Chianti said. "Who else are you recruiting? I assume you're orchestrating this and Vodka will also be involved."

Gin nodded once. "Correct. Kir will also be joining us for this mission."

Vodka frowned slightly and glanced at Gin, but his partner didn't seem inclined to say more. He resumed looking at the sniper pair, neither of which seemed to have noticed his distracted lapse in concentration.

Chianti hummed thoughtfully, but surprisingly, it was Korn who spoke first for once. "I like Kir," he said quietly.

"Yeah, I like her too. She does good work. She's a little too gentle for my tastes, but she's got a backbone and isn't a stuck-up bitch, not like that damn Vermouth," Chianti agreed, and a snarl distorted her voice when she said Vermouth's name. "Oh, what about Sherry? She's right there on the scene with this Kudo kid all the time; is she going to be helping us too?"

"No, Sherry may end up being a spectator and will assist with damage control where she can once she knows we're up to something, but she won't have an active role in this mission," Gin said.

"Oh, come on!" Chianti groaned and threw her head back. "I finally get to help with a 'Black Organization' mission and I don't even get to see my girl, Sherry? Ugh, what kind of bullshit is this?"

"This is not the time to play around, and Sherry is on a very important mission assigned to her by 'that person' which takes precedence over all other assignments," Gin said icily.

"Tch, kill joy," Chianti muttered. "So? What are Korn and I going to be doing in this fake mission of yours?"

"You and Korn will be the snipers set in place to eliminate a target that would potentially pose a future 'threat' to the Black Organization. It will be Kir's job to lead the target to the assassination spot, but she will be unsuccessful because Kudo will prevent us from killing the target," Gin explained.

"Well, that doesn't sound so bad," Chianti said with a grin.

"It won't as long as you play your role convincingly," Gin warned. "Kir will be bugged with a microphone and a transmitter from the very beginning of the mission, so Kudo will hear everything we say. He will be suspicious of anything strange that comes out of our mouths, especially if they don't match his preconceived notion of us."

"Just pretend that this mission is another one of your sniper simulation games, and you should be fine," Vodka said with a smirk.

Korn blushed red and Chianti scowled darkly at him. She turned back to Gin with a huff. "Fine, we're in. When is it?"

"This Saturday at 10:00 AM in Haido City in Tokyo. I'll give you the exact meeting location at a later date when I've arranged it. We'll see you both then," Gin said and stood up. Vodka stood up too.

"You got it, boss," Chianti said with a mocking salute to his back.

As soon as they left the VR generator room, Vodka said, "You didn't tell them about Vermouth?"

"I have no choice in the matter about Vermouth, but I need Chianti and Korn for this. There's no point in antagonizing them this early on. Chianti's going to bitch at me about Vermouth's involvement anyway, so I might as well delay it as long as possible," Gin said wearily.

Halfway up the dark stairs, another question sprang to mind. "Aniki, does Chianti have a crush on Sherry?"

Vodka promptly ran into something solid in the darkness and realized a second later that the 'something' was Gin. His partner had stopped mid-stride on the stairs. "Does it matter if she does?" Gin growled through gritted teeth

Vodka couldn't see Gin's face, but he didn't need to in order to imagine the death glare being sent his way right now. "No…" he said slowly.

"Correct," Gin said in that same icy tone. Vodka was certain he wasn't imagining the new heaviness to Gin's step as he finished going up the stairs and walked out onto the landing. Truthfully, Vodka had no idea if Chianti had a crush on Sherry or even liked women in that way, but because so few people in the Men in Black knew Gin and Sherry were in a relationship, it was fun watching Gin try to hide his jealousy over anyone of either sex expressing too much interest in her.

()()()()()

Gin didn't want to do this. He _really_ didn't want to do this. He did not want to have to call Vermouth and tell her to come along on this assignment. He didn't want her coming in the first place and had put off the call for three days already. However, since he _had_ to, he'd rather _call_ her than meet up with her in-person. It was less time that he would have to spend dealing with her and once he hung up, she would be gone. He wouldn't have to try and figure out a way to shake her off and prevent her from following him into his car, because she liked to do stuff like that to annoy him, even before he'd met Sherry. She just got even bolder about throwing herself at him after she'd figured out about his relationship with Sherry.

Resigned to the fact that this phone call would not get any easier the longer he put it off, he snatched up his phone from his car's dashboard before he talked himself out of it again and reluctantly dialed her cell.

" _Oh, Gin, this is an unexpected call from you. You don't usually call unless you need something from me,"_ Vermouth said, her voice dipping down into a seductive tone.

Gin's mood worsened in an instant. "'That person' requires you to assist me in a mission that will take place this Saturday at 10:00 AM. He feels it's been long enough since Kudo faced off against you that we can invent a new Black Organization scenario for him to chase," he said sharply.

" _All work and no play; it's no wonder you're always so uptight and brooding. A good rough tumble in the sheets would do you some good, but I suppose your girl's too **young** for that at the moment. Such a shame you're so unwilling to compromise your morals for a little fun on the side,"_ Vermouth said with a remorseful sigh. Gin's eye twitched. _"And? What am I expected to do?"_

"You will do nothing during Plan A except wait at Haido Park for it to fail, but for Plan B, you will need to disguise as Desankai's Kiriko Busujima."

" _Alright, but aren't you at least going to tell me why?"_ Vermouth asked. Her tone was a little snippier than usual as she said it.

He smirked briefly. "You don't need to know that until we need to put the plan into action. Just know what Kiriko Busujima looks like and that Kir will be bugged with a microphone and transmitter, so Kudo will hear every word we say. You're a famous actress, so pulling off something like this should be no trouble for you."

" _Very true,"_ Vermouth agreed unabashedly. _"Apart from myself, will this mission just include you, Vodka, and Kir?"_

"No, Chianti and Korn will also be present."

" _Oh ho, well that should make things interesting!"_ she said with a laugh. _"Of course, I expect you to pick me up to take me to the meeting location on Saturday since I no longer have a car of my own after it exploded."_

Gin highly doubted this since it had been too long for her to have not gotten one, but arguing would just keep him on the phone with her longer. Besides, if she was forced to travel in his car with him, he could better control her movements and keep a closer eye on her. "Fine. Remember, 10:00 AM this Saturday," he grunted.

" _I'm looking forward to it,"_ she said liltingly and Gin hung up on her before she could say anything else to infuriate him.

With a heavy sigh, he flopped backwards against the seat and stared blankly up at the ceiling through his long bangs. Damn that woman; talking with her always tired him out and he was already automatically reaching for the cigarettes he kept in his coat pocket. Well, this Saturday would hopefully give him more useful information on how to deal with her and figure out what her end game was. Maybe he'd even receive some insight into why Calvados had decided suicide was his best option for escape.

()()()()()

Saturday had arrived bright and early for Kir that morning and though she had not been worried about the doorbell-ringing prank, she _was_ surprised to learn the culprit was a little boy and was impressed by the deductive reasoning of the _other_ little boy: the one who called himself Conan Edogawa. He had an incredibly sharp mind and it very much reminded her of Gin. No wonder he was the designated mastermind of this elaborate ruse and Shinichi's personal enemy. Possibly Bourbon was the only other person capable of a battle of wits with this shrunken teenaged detective. Well, Rum and 'that person' might be able to as well, but she didn't know them well enough and they were far too busy running the Organization to indulge in something so trivial.

She left her apartment, locking the door behind her and started scanning the area. Gin had told her that Shinichi had a combined microphone and transmitter and it was very likely he had used it due to the nature of this case she had Detective Mouri investigate. She had noticed Conan walk back out of her apartment to the front door early yesterday afternoon and she had not seen him hang around long enough to have taken it back. If he had just left the transmitter behind, that would make her job much easier. Her eyes finally alighted upon a small circular white thing on the ground and she stooped down to pick it up. It was sticky, like gum, but gently pulling it apart, she found it: both the microphone and transmitter wrapped inside, just as she'd hoped. She sighed in quiet relief so as not to be overheard, then took off one of her shoes and stuck it to the bottom as if she'd just accidentally stepped on it when leaving her apartment. She put the shoe back on and started the walk to her car in the parking garage.

Everything was falling neatly into place. She was now bugged with Conan's transmitter and she'd noticed some of the FBI agents hanging out near her apartment for the past several days. All that was left to do now was lure Conan to her with both the promise and the threat of the Black Organization. Then the setup would be complete and the true scenario would finally begin.

Once Kir was in the parking garage, she turned on her phone and dialed the number for 'that person's' email to the tone of 'Seven Children'. Gin had also told her Conan knew what those notes meant and he would understand the hint. She sent a quick email to 'that person' informing him that the Black Organization scenario for Shinichi Kudo was about to begin and everything was working according to Gin's master plan so far. She had just finished sending the mail when her phone rang on vibrate. A quick glance at the number told her it was Gin calling. Right on time.

She answered it and brought the phone to her ear. "Yes?"

" _I've been trying to get a hold of you for the past five minutes now. You're cutting it close,"_ Gin said reproachfully.

"Ah, I'm sorry. I had a bit of trouble, so I turned off the cellphone," she explained.

" _Everything alright?"_

"It's fine, it was some ridiculous trouble. I just sent a mail to 'that person' about it," she said.

" _Ohh? So everything went off without a hitch regarding the bait for Kudo and the FBI?"_ he asked with sudden interest.

Kir couldn't help the smirk that crossed her lips. She could understand a little bit of why Gin enjoyed this game of cat and mouse with Shinichi. It was kinda fun pretending to be the bad guy when the other player didn't even know they were playing a game. "Yeah, there's no problem. Let's meet at 10 o'clock as promised… Gin."

()()()()()

"Eh?! Really, is that for real, Shinichi?" Dr. Agasa suddenly exclaimed.

Haibara stopped what she was doing and stared at him. She had been continuing her work on developing an antidote for APTX-4869 when the phone had started ringing and Dr. Agasa had answered. Well, he could be pretty excitable sometimes and controlling the volume output in a highly-emotional situation was not an easy thing to do with a mechanical body. It had nothing to do with her, so she turned back to the screen and continued scanning through the list of elements and chemical reactions that had been useful to her when developing the original drug.

Not a minute later though, the Professor's voice went suddenly quiet and he was whispering on the phone with Kudo. She looked back over at him and frowned slightly. What were he and Kudo discussing? The conversation didn't last much longer than that, to no surprise of hers. Kudo had a horrible habit of hanging up on people as soon as he was done, but before they were finished with him. It was incredibly rude and she'd love to smack him for it sometime.

Dr. Agasa ended the call on his end and she was just about to ask him what Kudo had been talking about when he turned to her and said, "Shinichi found another of the Men in Black in Haido City."

"What? But how?" she blurted out in shock before she could stop herself.

Dr. Agasa shook his head in bewilderment. "He didn't say, only that he found them by 'scary coincidence'. I think he somehow stumbled across them by accident."

Haibara crossed her arms and hummed thoughtfully. "Could be…" she agreed. "Or it could be that this is a scenario planned out for him by the Organization to make him think he accidentally found one of them. Because Kudo is determined to bring them down, there have apparently been a couple times when his interference has nearly gotten in the way of real MiB matters. My lover mentioned to me that they were going to start inventing scenarios for him that were planned to give him a lead to chase and keep him on his toes. They're supposed to make him feel like he's making real progress towards bringing down the Organization and recovering his original form, even if he doesn't actually end up getting anything too important out of them."

"I see. That makes sense," Dr. Agasa said slowly.

Haibara fixed him with a stern look. "Well? What does Kudo want you for?"

"Oh that. Shinichi wants me to pick him up in Haido City so that he can follow the new member he's found. He also told me not to tell you anything about this," he added with a nervous laugh.

Haibara rolled her eyes. "Of course he did. Well, let's go help maintain the Organization's cover and assist that case-happy fool however we can," she said briskly and walked over to the coat stand next to the front door to grab her coat.

"Oi, Ai, wait for me," the Professor said and hurried to follow after her.

()()()()()

This was impossible. It had always been so, but only now, as Kir stood in Haido Park with Mr. Domon surrounded by fans on an overcast day waiting to interview him in order to lead him into a supposed ambush, was she beginning to realize it. Conan was skilled and brilliant, but even she had to admit that he wasn't on par with Gin. His resolution of the bell-ringer prank was well-done, but this scenario was on a whole different level. From the hints they'd given him at the 10 o'clock meeting in the parking garage, he _might_ be able to figure out the location of the fake assassination, but Kir couldn't see _how_ he was supposed to figure out who DJ was or how to stop them in such a way that it wasn't obvious the Organization was thwarted by a person. She feared Gin may have overestimated their young opponent's abilities.

" _What's wrong, Kir? Make DJ sit soon,"_ Gin said over the ear piece.

Why? To prove that nothing would happen to him? Kir closed her eyes in frustration. This scenario relied on Conan's actions to move it forward otherwise it came to a standstill, like pausing a video game. The game couldn't continue if the player hadn't reached that stage yet.

" _Kir?"_

Kir opened her eyes again, staring resolutely ahead. She had to trust Gin. He knew how Shinichi Kudo worked better than anyone else on this mission and he might have some critical piece of information that assured him of Shinichi's presence in the area. He was the game master of this scenario and she was the NPC.

She approached her interviewee. "Mr. Domon, can we start the interview soon?" she asked.

Mr. Domon smiled at her. "Yes, I agree," he said and he led the way to the bench she had indicated earlier right before she had tried to stall for time.

'Gin, if you have a trump card up your sleeve to resolve this situation, now would be a good time to either play it yourself or let me know what it is,' Kir thought desperately as she watched Mr. Domon walk ahead of her.

She was just beginning to wonder if she'd have to end up carrying through with the interview after all when she heard a loud popping sound followed by rushing water and she snapped her head around to find the source. One of the sprinklers was gushing water straight up at least three meters high when she heard the same popping noise and another sprinkler was spouting water in the exact same fashion. She stared bewildered at the two broken sprinklers. One malfunctioning all of a sudden was not unheard of, but two at the same time was too much of a coincidence. No sooner had Kir thought that when she saw a woman with short blond hair and glasses, holding a gun with a silencer attached, dart across the park's path from one stretch of trees to the other.

" _Good, the FBI made it,"_ Gin said so suddenly in such a quiet voice, she startled. She'd forgotten she was still wearing the earpiece and he answered her unspoken queries anyway, _"That woman is popping open the sprinklers with her gun to make them shoot water into the air. When the water falls back down to the ground, people will think it's raining and put up their umbrellas, which neatly prevents us from being able to carry through with the assassination attempt in the park."_

Kir internally sighed with relief and tapped the edge of the camera pin on her chest twice to thank Gin for the explanation without giving herself away to Conan.

Gin's next words were broadcasted to the entire group, _"Chianti, Kir, Korn, retreat for now. I'll be waiting at the next place an hour later."_

That meant she had an hour to make her excuses to leave the rest of the interview crew behind and then find her way to the meeting location for the next stage of the plan. She opened up her umbrella and turned back to face Mr. Domon.

"It can't be helped," he said, looking up first at the cloudy, overcast sky above, then back at her. "Let's do the interview at the park gazebo?" he suggested.

"Sure," she agreed.

"Well, let's go."

He had barely started walking when one of his supporters came up to him. "Um, can we follow too?" she asked with breathless excitement.

"Yes, of course," he said with a kind smile.

"Then I'll go!" said a young man.

"Me too!" another woman said.

Out of nowhere, Kir found herself surrounded by a swarm of running, excited Domon supporters. In the confusion and chaos, she tripped forward and lost her shoe, the one that had Conan's microphone and transmitter, and it was accidentally kicked further away from her by the running crowd. She tried to retrieve it, but she was fighting against the current and people kept knocking into her shoulders, buffeting her around like a kite in the wind. Far from just needing to get her shoe back to be able to walk around, she needed to reach it before Conan did. She did not need to have Gin's or Bourbon's brilliance to know that he would remove the microphone and transmitter as soon as he got the opportunity to, but she couldn't let him do that yet. There was still another part of the scenario that he needed to participate in. She finally managed to grab her shoe at the same time that another, much smaller hand closed around it. They'd reached for it simultaneously and they both stared at each other in shock. This… this was not part of the plan. Somehow, in all of the prep work she'd done in the preceding week, she had not thought to discuss with Gin what she should do if she met Conan halfway through the scenario.

Kir's mind was racing hard and fast. 'Think Hidemi, you're a CIA agent working as a liaison for the Japanese branch of the Men in Black, and right now pretending to work for a secret crime organization. You should be able to figure out how to handle this situation."

What did she know and what did she need to do? She couldn't blow the Organization's cover and she needed to prevent Conan from removing the microphone and transmitter. He was a very smart kid, and very much like Gin and Bourbon in that respect. Both men had a keen sense of being able to detect when something was wrong and she assumed it was the same with Conan. While that was excellent for problem-solving, it also resulted in one important weakness: distraction. Gin's words from a week ago came back to her regarding Shinichi's ability to find the weak link in a story and unravel the truth, but she wouldn't give him enough information for him to _able_ to learn the truth about the Organization or her job. Either way, she would want to know why Conan was here at the park now. Kir removed the ear piece and fell back on her CIA training.

She brought her hand up to Conan's neck and lightly pressed her fingers against it until she felt his pulse. It was a little faster than normal, undoubtedly because he'd been found by a member of the Black Organization. "Perhaps… you followed me?" she asked.

()()()()()

As soon as they had entered the parking lot, Haibara had wasted no time in locating Gin's car. It wasn't hard because Dr. Agasa had stupidly stopped right behind the black Porsche to let Conan and Jodie out. She'd have thought Kudo would have a bit more care about not drawing the attention of the man who'd supposedly tried to kill him, but she let it slide without comment. He wasn't in any true danger, but she'd grilled Dr. Agasa about it after the door had slammed shut. To make it up to her, he chose a parking spot close enough for her to still see her associate's car.

Her ire appeased, she stared fixedly at the vintage car, her gaze unwavering. Gin was there, conducting this scenario – she was certain that's what it was – with the patience of a chess master. He knew what Dr. Agasa's car looked like, but he was probably too engrossed in directing people and preparing for Kudo's moves to have noticed the Beetle's arrival. She laid her hand palm-flat against the glass.

But he may have noticed. Did he know she was here too? That this was the closest they had physically been to each other since the first and only time she had taken her prototype antidote? Wouldn't he get out of his car, mission be damned, and sweep her into his arms if he knew how close she was? Haibara sighed at this last thought and shook her head. That was just her romantic fantasy talking. Gin would never forsake the success of a mission like that. It was not in his nature, no matter how much he loved her, and she admired that. She could very easily get out of the Beetle herself and walk over to him in his car, but she didn't dare. It was better that he didn't know she was so close by. He loved her, but her presence would distract him and he would not appreciate the loss of focus on such a sensitive operation. She assumed Kudo had managed to thwart Gin's assassination scheme as planned when she heard the engine's distinctive noise start up and she watched it leave the parking lot, thinking longingly of her fair-haired lover and wishing she could have seen him, maybe after having taken the prototype antidote again. It was a nice fantasy for sure.

()()()()()

Kir was not surprised to find that she was the last of the group to arrive at the dark, empty warehouse they had agreed to meet at in order to stage the next part of the operation.

"There she is: the woman of the hour! Well done, Kir!" Chianti said loudly and ran over to her, throwing her arm around her shoulders.

"Chianti, please! I'm still-!"

"It's alright, Gin said we're too far away for the microphone to be able to pick up our voices yet. He reckons we've got about ten minutes before we have to start acting like criminals again," Chianti said reassuringly.

"Is that so?" Kir asked, looking over at the man in question. Gin nodded.

Korn came over too and laid one of his hands on the top of her head. "You did good," he said quietly.

Chianti laughed. "See? There's no higher praise than that from Korn."

Kir felt herself becoming both embarrassed and flustered. They were making such a big deal out of this! "But I didn't do anything all that special," she tried to say.

"Nah, but you managed to lure Kudo to us and enabled him to thwart the first page of the assassination plan without a hitch. I'd take the credit where credit is due, Kir," said Vodka.

"But it didn't go without a hitch!" Kir protested, unable to take the praise she didn't deserve and stepped away from Chianti towards Gin. "After you called off the assassination and turned off the video feed, I lost my shoe with the transmitter and ended up meeting Conan there at the park."

Gin's green eyes sharpened instantly. "What happened?" he demanded.

"By coincidence, we had both grabbed my shoe at the exact same time. I knew he was going to take the gum off and knew I somehow had to stop him from doing so while maintaining the Men in Black's cover and protecting my job. I reasoned that if he's as brilliant as you say he is, then distracting him intellectually would be my best option," she explained.

His eyes narrowed and the corner of his mouth twitched sideways. "And how exactly did you do that?"

"Well, I put my fingers against his neck to feel his pulse, just as I was taught by the CIA…" she showed him on herself. "And I asked him if he followed me. I could feel his pulse change when he lied to me, but I pretended to let it slide and thanked him for picking up my shoe. He didn't try to follow me or get the shoe back, so I think I was successful. I know using that technique from the CIA was risky, but I don't think he'd be able to figure out I'm a CIA agent just from that one instance, so I think it's safe."

"No, that wasn't the first time," he said. "I couldn't say anything about it at the time, but earlier when we were all meeting in the parking garage this morning, you said 'Our contribution will never come to light, but our failure will be noticed immediately'. That's a paraphrase of a CIA saying, is it not?"

"I… Did I say that?" she said uncertainly.

Gin stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned against his Porsche. "If you had only said that, he would never figure it out from that alone, but when you decided to use that lie-testing technique, that phrase will only serve to confirm his theory later if the idea comes into his head that you work for the CIA."

"Wait, so are you saying that this Kudo kid now knows our Kir is a CIA agent?" Chianti demanded. She had moved forward to stand beside her again.

"No, we're safe for now," Gin said with a shake of his head. "Kudo is too preoccupied at the moment with trying to stop the second phase of the assassination plan to spend any extra time puzzling out the origin of Kir's training. However, we should not be surprised in the future if Kudo eventually discovers Kir is a CIA agent."

"I'm sorry, Gin. I didn't mean to give him so much information, I-" she said, trying to apologize, but Gin cut her off with a look and a sharp wave of his hand.

"Don't worry about it, Kir, we'll adapt as we always do. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine for not planning on an unexpected encounter with the kid. You did what you had to to get yourself out of there and you were successful. Even if he does find out you're a CIA agent, he still won't know we're an alien enforcement agency."

"Man, this detective brat is a headache," Chianti groaned and returned to her own car, sitting on the hood of the blue Dodge Viper. "Why couldn't Sherry have picked somebody a little less smart to do this job? He seems to learn something new that we don't want him to every time that he encounters us."

"You can't complain that he's not tenacious," Korn offered and moved forward to join Chianti by the car.

Chianti huffed, unable to disagree with his statement. "Yeah, I guess not. It's frustrating though and we haven't even been involved in this since the beginning like those two." She gestured to Gin and Vodka.

"Hey, where's Vermouth? Is she not with you guys?" Kir asked suddenly once she realized why she felt like their numbers were short.

Chianti scoffed, but Gin answered, "She left to go get prepared for the second phase of the plan. She'll be back shortly. Speaking of which, I have clothes in my car for you to change into that will be more comfortable and more appropriate than what you're wearing now."

Kir raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh? You know how to choose clothes for a woman that will fit her, Gin?"

He offered her a knowing smirk. "You'd be surprised what I know."

"Probably, but where am I going to get changed? There don't appear to be any good hiding places in here," she said, looking around at the bare walls and empty corners.

"You can get changed in my car," he offered.

His words were met with an instant uproar.

"What?! That's _really_ your best suggestion?!" Kir gaped in disbelief.

"The hell she will, you fucking pervert, your windows aren't even tinted!" Chianti screeched. Ironically, she seemed more furious about the idea than Kir herself.

"Aniki, I don't think that's a good idea," Vodka muttered, looking distinctly uncomfortable, though that may have been more because Chianti looked ready to claw someone's eyes out.

Gin showed no reaction to any of the outbursts and faced Kir squarely. "The only light in this warehouse is from the sunlight filtering from outside through the door and some holes in the roof. Tinting of the windows, or lack of, won't make much of a difference in this particular environment. The cars are the only hiding places in this whole empty warehouse and are more comfortable and protected. As for the difference between my car and Chianti's, I don't care which one you choose, but I assure you I have absolutely _no_ interest whatsoever in watching you get changed and Vodka gets too easily embarrassed by women he knows to even dare consider it."

Vodka looked flustered at his partner's blunt words, but didn't make any attempt to deny them. "Fine, I guess it doesn't matter," Kir said with a huff and walked straight towards Gin. She stood in front of him and met his unflinching gaze through those thick blond bangs of his. "However, once I'm in there getting dressed, I expect you and Vodka to be standing in front of the window with your backs turned. No peeking, you promise?"

"Don't worry, Kir. If they try, I'll just kick their heads in for you," Chianti reassured her before Gin could get a word out.

"That won't be necessary, but it's a reasonable request," Gin said without taking his eyes off her. "Just know that by the time you come out, Kudo will likely be close enough again to overhear us, so don't say anything out of character."

"Understood," she said.

Gin opened the driver's side door for her and Kir slipped into the backseat where she found a bag with a one-piece bike suit. She quickly checked the tag for the size and held it up to her chest to measure the waist and length of the arms. She gave a soft hum of appreciation. It actually did seem like it would fit her. She glanced out the car window and saw both Gin's ash-blond hair and Vodka's large form next to him right in her line of vision, standing in front of the window with their backs to her just as she'd requested, and she couldn't see Chianti or Korn. Without another moment's hesitation, she started stripping off her interview clothes to get dressed for the next phase of the plan.

()()()()()

Vodka unfolded a local map of the area on top of Chianti's car and Gin brought the two snipers over to look at it from around his shoulder. "Korn will be here and Chianti will be positioned here," he said, tapping two different locations on the paper. "But if you want to switch, I'll leave that up to you two."

"We're counting on you two!" Vodka said far too cheerfully.

Chianti and Korn seemed to immediately engage in a shockingly silent argument over who would have which location, but Gin was only half paying attention to it. His main focus had instead wandered to the two women standing just behind his car, namely the secretive blond one that now had a major role to play in this plan.

"Where's my bike?" Kir asked Vermouth.

"Ah, it's behind that container," Vermouth answered, gesturing to the location with her thumb.

"Thanks, let's meet up again at Bein B," said Kir and she started walking in that direction to retrieve it.

"Hey, Kir…" Vermouth said suddenly and rather quietly. Kir turned to face her and Gin remained still. "You're not…" She knocked twice on the motorcycle's speedometer. "This, right?"

Gin's eyes widened in shock for a moment and then he glared at Vermouth out of the corner of his eye. What the hell was she doing asking that and within the microphone's hearing range too? Kir too, seemed stunned by the question. "Don't be stupid, of course not," she said flatly and resumed walking back to the container to retrieve her motorcycle for the mission.

Vermouth watched her and then turned back to the front, but Gin didn't let her catch him staring angrily at her. If calling her out right now wouldn't land him in even more of a tangled mess than he already was, he'd do so in a heartbeat. Kir had slipped up in the initial meeting and then been forced to act according to how she saw fit when she ran into Kudo an hour ago, but it had not been her intention to give the young detective hints that she was a CIA agent. It was not necessary for him to know, but there was nothing they could do if he figured it out from the two clues Kir had given him. _Vermouth's_ completely unnecessary question was like a big billboard in flashing neon lights declaring 'Hey, there's something strange about Kir! Please pay attention to her and figure out what it means!' Fucking hell, it wasn't even a cleverly-disguised way of asking if Kir was a NOC, just a play on words! He swore, if Kudo found out Kir was a CIA agent because of Vermouth's stupid question, he was going to strangle her, and he was at least 75% serious about following through with it.

Vermouth revved up the engine of her motorcycle and straightened out to leave the warehouse. "Well, I'll go on ahead," she called. "If something happens, try to give me some good support coverage, okay? Something about this assassination plot feels wrong."

Screw it, he was going to strangle her now and silence that wicked tongue of hers before she could continue spouting off more nonsense.

Chianti stepped up to the plate and responded perfectly. "Heh, leave it to me. If things go wrong and you get caught, then I'll definitely put my bullet through you," she said with a vicious smile, and Gin was sure she meant it too.

Vermouth appeared unfazed by the implied threat. "Sure. If it comes to that, would you please aim for my face? If the public finds out that I was a part of this assassination, things will turn out bad, right?"

Gin couldn't hold back his silence any longer. Vermouth kept verbally hinting that something might interfere with this assignment, and it was something that Gin literally couldn't ignore as both the secret assassin he was pretending to be, and the scheming strategist he actually was.

"Is something bothering you, Vermouth?" he asked.

"No, I just have a feeling. Don't worry about it," she said cryptically and roared out of the warehouse on her motorcycle, leaving them all behind.

Silence echoed all around them after she left. Chianti flipped up both her middle fingers where Vermouth had just been and Korn didn't try and put them back down.

Kir came out from behind the container with her own motorcycle. "Vermouth went on ahead?" she asked.

"Yeah, and we should all be leaving too if we want to get there in time," Gin said with a more pronounced growl in his voice than usual. Vermouth was acting very suspiciously and he was convinced now more than ever of the need to activate the _secret plan_. He _would_ get to the bottom of this.

()()()()()

Kir was on her way to the 'assassination' spot when the radio crackled in her ear and Chianti's voice came through, _"Okay, I have an unobstructed view. How about you, Korn?"_

" _I can see well,"_ he replied.

" _Yeah, I'm already in position."_ That was Vermouth.

" _Good, we just have to wait for Kir, then,"_ Vodka said, though it was difficult to hear him through the static on his end. If that's what Gin had heard on her end that morning, no wonder he'd played at being suspicious.

" _Hey, Vodka, I've been hearing noise from your side for a while now,"_ Vermouth said.

" _Huh?"_

" _Uh, nothing,"_ she said shortly.

Well, that was just odd. Why wasn't she elaborating on the noise and just letting it slide like that? They all knew that the noise was coming from the microphone and transmitter interfering with the signals, so why was she pretending like it wasn't there? Speaking of odd things, she wasn't 100%, but she was almost certain that there were two cars that had been following behind her for a while now.

"I see, it may be a few minutes until I arrive," she informed everyone over the radio.

" _Tell me when you get there, Kir,"_ Gin said.

"Yes sir," she answered.

The light blue car that had been following her finally pulled out ahead and dropped back into her lane after it had passed her, but then slowed way down. She tried to drop back and give it space, but found a dark blue car blocking her exit that way just as a silver car came along the right and prevented her from going around that way. She was boxed in and there was no way this was unintentional. This was a trap meant to catch her as a member of the Black Organization.

The driver of the silver car rolled down his window. "Excuse me," he said in English, but then the rest of his sentence was in Japanese. "I have a question for you."

Kir didn't recognize the old man, but she _did_ recognize the blonde woman in the passenger seat next to him pointing her gun at her. The FBI. "Do you mind stopping your motorcycle?" the blonde asked.

As a matter of fact, she _did_ mind. With a mighty heave, an acceleration, and a shift of her body weight, she had the motorcycle jump onto the back of the car in front of her and climbed to the roof. Just as she was about to jump off the top of the car and make her escape from the box, she saw a soccer ball fly out into the middle of the road and a small boy ran out after it.

Raw terror struck her. They weren't going to stop in time! She saw her little brother's face flash before her eyes. Oh god!

The car she was riding on gave an almighty lurch and spun into a violent 90 degree stop, but she continued flying forward. She spun sideways in midair and fell off the motorcycle. She struck the ground with bone-breaking force and her momentum forced her to roll over and over, hitting the asphalt repeatedly. She was barely conscious when her helmet flew off, but after that, everything went dark. Her last thought was at least the boy hadn't been hit.

()()()()()

Something wasn't right. Kir has been radio silent for too long and she should have reached her destination by now.

" _Hey, is she there yet?"_ Chianti complained over the radio. _"Men who make women wait will be hated!"_

"Don't rush, Chianti," Gin warned her. "Kir hasn't contacted me yet and DJ's car is not on the bridge yet."

" _Hey, it's probably not important or anything, but I can't hear your voice well; there's some serious noise on your end,"_ she pointed out.

Finally, someone mentioned the noise! He could have kissed Chianti if it wouldn't have gotten him killed by Sherry. Vermouth had briefly touched upon it, but then backed off quickly. Honestly, the way she was acting, it was like she _wanted_ Kudo to learn as much about them as he could and _really_ bring down the Organization. Ire surged through him anew and firmed his resolve to carry through with the secret plan against Vermouth. He had planned for the cue to be when somebody mentioned the noise and Vermouth's lack of it, on top of everything else she'd said today, was reason enough to move forward with this test. Gin turned around in his seat and started rummaging in the bag behind him for Kir's shoe with the transmitter on it.

He eventually found it and a feral grin stole across his features. _Now_ , the fun could begin. He would finally have answers about Vermouth's motive and loyalty, and he would make that detective brat squirm in terror with the fear of his identity being discovered and his loved ones being eliminated one by one. It was the price he was required to pay for his carelessness and for underestimating him once more. How many more times did that boy have to rush recklessly after him only to suddenly backtrack, or have Sherry browbeat him with constant reminders of how dangerous the Organization was before it finally stuck and he took heed?

Gin peeled the gum off the shoe and peeled it apart to reveal the wireless and tap and transmitter. He observed them briefly and, just like last time, crushed the transmitter, but he left the microphone untouched this time. He wrapped his handkerchief around the microphone and stuffed it into his coat with a sense of giddy excitement. How nervous Kudo must be now that the transmitter had stopped sending a signal.

He pulled out his phone and texted a quick message to 'that person': _Everything is happening right on schedule, just as planned. – Gin_

Once that was done, he replaced his phone in his coat and grabbed the radio speaker again. "Everyone pull out. The mission is cancelled."

" _Huh? Cancelled?"_ Chianti echoed back in confusion. _"Are you telling me to quit after coming all the way here?"_

"Yeah, I just told 'that person' about it as well. We're changing the target," Gin said without explaining. He was the only one who knew this part of the plan.

" _Changing…?"_ Korn repeated curiously.

" _Changing the target?"_ That was Vermouth. _"So? Where is the next target?"_

"The place is Beika City, District 5…" he paused for effect, savoring this moment. "The Mouri Detective Agency."

He heard Vermouth's startled gasp over the radio and he relished the sound. The closest he'd gotten to throwing her off her game was when he'd had his gun to her temple in his car the night she'd tried to kill Sherry, but it was nothing like this. Nothing at all like this. He was going to enjoy it while he could.

()()()()()

Haibara and Dr. Agasa had just finished making enough tea for everyone and setting the two cakes on the trays – one of which she planned to offer to Ran and the other was for herself – and walked into the living room where the TV was, only to fine just one person sitting there.

"Eh? Ran's playing this game? Where's Mouri?" Dr. Agasa asked.

"Oh, Dad said it was almost time for the main horse race to begin, so he went home just a few minutes ago," Ran said.

Haibara gasped and looked at the Professor. He had the exact same stunned look on his face. This wasn't how it was supposed to go! After they'd left Kudo behind with the FBI, Haibara had filled in the Professor on what she suspected of the scenario based on what she knew of both Kudo and Gin. Despite her warning to him before they'd parted ways, she knew Kudo wouldn't be able to stop himself from prioritizing the second assassination attempt over the retrieval of the transmitter and microphone and Gin would take advantage of that. He would find them, suspect Detective Kogoro Mouri had planted the device on Rena Mizunashi's shoe, and take appropriate action to eliminate the threat to the Black Organization's secrecy. It was _her_ self-assigned job to make sure there was nobody home when Gin arrived. Mr. Mouri wasn't supposed to be there! How was Gin going to be able to deal with this in a way that would not actually result in anyone getting killed, but still protect the Organization's secret from the FBI?

Agasa bent down and whispered in her ear, "Ai, what do we do?"

Haibara bit her lower lip and then whispered back, "Even if I called them right now, I think they're too busy to answer the phone or read a text. I could try, but they would get it too late to be helpful now. We don't have a good way to warn them. Kudo will probably end up calling soon, so you can tell him about Detective Mouri's return to the house. He may unwittingly be the key to helping them get out of this mess: we'll have to trust Kudo's belief in the Organization's deadliness."

The tray of cakes still in her hands, Haibara walked up to Ran and sat down next to her on one of the pillows. "Would you like some cake, Ran? The Professor made tea as well."

Ran beamed down at her and took a slice from her. "Why thank you, Ai. You didn't have to go to all that trouble for me."

Haibara couldn't help a small smile from making its way onto her face. "It was no trouble at all, I wanted to."

She hadn't planned on it and she hadn't expected she would spend time with Ran today, but she was glad she was here. Chronologically speaking, she was Ran's agemate, even technically a year older than her. Being with her like this though, it was almost like having Akemi back again, and she was going to enjoy it while she could.

()()()()()

Vermouth pulled up alongside his car and Gin was very pleased to see her looking so annoyed. "Gin, what's the meaning of this? Why are we going after the Mouri Detective Agency as if we really are part of a crime syndicate," she demanded.

He sneered at her and got out of the car. "I'll tell you once you get in. I'd say 'ladies first', but I don't see any."

"How courteous of you," she said with a fake smile, but climbed into the back seat anyway, leaving the Harley motorcycle behind.

Gin got in after her and Vodka started the drive back to Beika. He brought the radio back toward his mouth and spoke into it, "Chianti, I've got Vermouth and we're heading towards Beika. What's your status?"

" _I picked up Korn and… actually, I think I see you up ahead."_

Gin quickly looked in the rearview mirror and, sure enough, it was still a way back, but that was definitely Chianti's Viper. "Good, keep close. I don't need you getting picked off by the FBI too."

" _Is that why Kir hasn't gotten back to us yet?"_ she said worriedly.

"I think so, but we'll have to deal with that later. Right now, we have a more pressing situation on our hands and it would be foolish not to take advantage of this opportunity."

" _Okay, but what exactly are we going to do? We're going to the Mouri Detective Agency and then what?"_

"It'll depend on what's waiting for us," he said. "I have no doubt that Kudo told Sherry what's going on and that she would have acted accordingly to move the Mouris out of harm's way, but nonetheless, we should be prepared for the Mouris to still be there and to continue playing the roles we've been assigned."

" _How exciting! I'm looking forward to it!"_ Chianti crowed over the radio and silence fell on her end.

"And just how far are you willing to go to play the role of an assassin?" Vermouth said coldly. "It'd be one thing if the Mouris aren't home, but if they _are_ , are you going to have Chianti and Korn shoot them in the head like you did with Pisco just to maintain the Organization's cover?"

"You know perfectly well that the Pisco I shot was an alien impersonator that had already killed the real Pisco several days previously," Gin retorted, just as cold.

Vermouth raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Oh, that actually makes a difference with you? I was under the impression you didn't care _what_ they were if they threatened the very small, select group of people you deign to care about."

"Indeed, and the Mouris don't fit under the classification of 'threat', now do they? In fact, as you so kindly informed me a while ago, Ran Mouri saved Sherry's life. I have no reason to wish that family harm." He turned to glance back at Vermouth out of the corner of his eye. "Kudo would put his own life on the line to protect them; he will definitely come to stop us and I'm counting on it. You should have a bit more faith in your _favorite detective_."

Vermouth stared stonily back at him for a few more seconds before averting her gaze. Gin would count that as another victory against her and settled back in his seat to watch the road ahead. She was an excellent actress, but her mask was slipping. He nearly had her, he just needed to keep pushing her buttons, and apparently, the threat of harm to the Mouris or Shinichi Kudo was something as intolerable to her as any threat made to Sherry, Vodka, or Curaçao was to him. Gin was certain she had not always had this weakness, but he would take full advantage of it. He did not know the next time he would be presented with such a unique opportunity to attack Vermouth's impenetrable armor.

"Ah, Aniki, there it is!" Vodka exclaimed after a while and pointing at a building with the words 'Mouri Detective Agency' written on the glass panels of the second floor.

"Excellent. Pull over into that side alley on the opposite side of the Agency. It'll make the cars a little less obvious and enable us to make a quick getaway if something unexpected happens."

Vodka did as he was told and Gin watched the mirrors to make sure Chianti saw and followed. They parked the cars and all five of them got out.

"Okay, Gin, what's the plan?" Chianti asked as soon as she saw him.

Her jerked his thumb at the building they were next to that stood directly across from the Mouri Detective Agency. "This one looks empty, so we'll go to the rooftop and scout out the situation from there. As I said, what we end up doing all depends on if anyone's home or not. Be sure to bring the sniper rifles. We might end up needing them."

"You got it, boss," she said happily and dragged Korn with her to pull the weapons out of the trunk.

Gin started walking without them and made his way over to the outdoor fire escape. He hadn't planned it, but it was convenient that they had parked in the alley where the fire escape was. They wouldn't have to worry about being exposed if things got hairy. Vodka and Vermouth followed silently behind him up the stairs all the way to the rooftop. It was an excellent vantage point to see down into the street and the glass panes enabled anyone up here to look right into the Agency's main office. It was too easy for someone to try and shoot the family from up here, especially with the desk right up against the window like that. Speaking of which, it looked like they had company. Detective Mouri was sitting at the desk watching something playing on the TV. He didn't see the daughter though. Maybe she'd gone out to run errands or spend time with a friend.

"Ack, Aniki, it looks like the detective is here," Vodka said with a grimace.

"So it would seem," Gin agreed, thinking.

"Nothing has to happen here. We can just leave right now, and nobody will know that we observed the situation, determined it unsafe, and left it alone," Vermouth said with a snappish tone.

"No, it's too late for that. Before I informed you all of the change in the plan, I had already destroyed the transmitter to get the boy's attention. He knows I found it and as reckless as he is, he knows the first person I would suspect of planting the transmitter would be Kogoro Mouri. He expects me to act. To not make a play here now would only be more suspicious," he countered, still not taking his eyes off of Mouri's back.

The sound of two pairs of feet on the fire escape was steadily getting louder until at last, Chianti's head poked into view and she waved merrily at him. "Yo, Gin, we got the rifles. How's it look up here?"

"One of you might end up getting to shoot today. Kogoro Mouri is here waiting for us."

Chianti pumped her fist into the air. "Finally!" she exclaimed. She turned to Korn who'd sidled up next to her. "You've won the last two contests for shooting preferences, I want to be the one to make the shot this time."

Korn inclined his head stiffly. "Alright," he agreed.

"Perfect! Let's get set up then!"

While they made sure the rifles were ready, Vodka approached him with uneasy expression on his face. "What is it, Vodka?" he asked quietly.

His broad-shouldered partner hesitated then brought his hand up and whispered, "Aniki, are you sure about this? I'm sure you had a good reason for not telling me about this part of the plan, but I guess this is about Vermouth somehow, judging by the way she's acting."

Gin smiled proudly down at him. Sure, Vodka was no Holmes, but his brain wasn't a box of rocks either and it infuriated him that so many agents treated him so. He was always happy to see the stunned looks on their faces when Vodka proved them wrong. They deserved to underestimate him. "You're right, Vodka. I'm using this as a means of testing Vermouth. She's been saying odd things that she shouldn't while within range of the microphone, knowing that it's active, and it seems odd to me that Calvados chose to commit suicide. I have a feeling she's somehow responsible for it, but I need to force her into a corner first, and this is the only thing that seems to be working. I've nearly got her, I just need to push her a bit more."

"But Vermouth's right! What if Kudo doesn't show up in time? Are you really going to risk killing an innocent human if it means Vermouth finally cracks? Her secrets aren't worth that much!" Vodka said sternly.

The smile faded from Gin's face and he turned away from Vodka. He stared down at Detective Mouri once more and spoke with detached conviction, "Vermouth brought Calvados with her that night and left him behind to get caught by the FBI, but he shouldn't have died. She knew he was there, but she kept his involvement a secret. She also tried her damnedest to kill Sherry. Vermouth's secrets have a tendency of getting good people killed and I can't allow that to continue. I know I'm not a good person, but I owe it to the Organization that offered a job and a purpose to two homeless, starving, penniless semi-orphaned teenagers ten years ago. I will get what I'm after and nobody is going to die today for me to get it."

Vodka looked like he wanted to argue, but then decided to drop it without saying anything.

"Good news, Gin, Korn and I are all ready," Chianti called over to him.

"Good, then let's get started. Set yourselves up along the roof railing and one of you take out his TV antennae. We should at least give him a chance to be suspicious of foul play."

"Well, Korn, do you want the antenna?" Chianti asked her partner.

His expression didn't change at all as he said, "No, you do it."

She snickered and punched him playfully in the shoulder. "What? Too boring a target for you? Okay, I'll take it, but this doesn't count as my shot, got that?" She raised the sniper rifle to her eye level and a second later, the TV antenna was snapped in half.

"Got it," Korn said. He took up his position right next to her and he too raised the weapon, viewing Detective Mouri through the scope.

From his place standing behind them, Gin watched Mouri hit the TV in frustration and then reach over to unplug the phone. Interesting, had he received a call? Probably a warning call from Kudo. Oh well, he wouldn't receive it now. Mouri put something in his ear, an earphone probably, then sat back down with his back to the window again, holding a newspaper in his hands. Well, that was a completely underwhelming response.

"Alright, show time. Chianti, whatever happens, you _will_ shoot on my mark. I'm unwrapping the microphone now, so don't say anything unusual from here on out," Gin warned everyone and removed the handkerchief from around the microphone. "Can you hear me, Kogoro Mouri? Don't move, I have your back in my sight."

A quick glance down into the street revealed Kudo was still nowhere in sight. An idea for how to stall came to him in an instant. "I have something to ask you before your suit gets some new holes. It's about your relationship to Sherry. The microphone and the transmitter you planted are similar to the ones she used. You can't say it's a coincidence."

Yes, let Kudo think on that for a bit. His memory was good and long as much as Sherry liked to tease him otherwise. "I'll give you ten seconds," he continued saying into the microphone. "If you feel like answering, then take your left hand away from the earphone and raise it into the air."

Vodka tapped him hard on the shoulder and pointed down into the street. Gin followed his finger and saw a silver car racing towards them. It was moving way too fast for a residential area like this, which meant it was either some punk who thought they were hot stuff or it was their little protagonist to the rescue. Gin smirked at Vodka and nodded, motioning for him to point out the speeding car to Chianti and Korn as well. While Vodka did so, Gin started the countdown from ten, carefully watching the car and gauging how quickly he needed to speak. He needed to finish at just the right moment for Kudo's soccer ball to intercept Chianti's bullet.

"… Five… four…" The silver car's roof retracted and Gin could clearly see the three occupants inside: two adults, both FBI agents, and one child. "Three… two… one… fire."

Chianti fired just as the soccer ball soared upward at an alarming speed and flew right into the bullet's path. The resulting force from the bullet slammed the ball so hard, the entire window pane cracked and bent inward, though miraculously didn't break. The two snipers gasped in unison and watched the ball plummet back down to the ground.

"A… soccer ball?" Chianti murmured in stunned disbelief, not familiar with Kudo's gadgets.

Mouri threw open one of the unbroken windows with a loud slam and bellowed angrily, "Hey, who did that?!"

"Sorry, I think I kicked it a bit too hard!" Kudo yelled in a childish, apologetic tone to the old man he was currently living with. "By the way, how did the horse race go? You were listening to it through that earphone, right?"

"Horse race?" Vodka repeated blankly.

So that's what Mouri had been listening to on the earphone.

"Aah! I completely missed it because of you!" Mouri shouted back at the boy who'd apparently just broken his window.

Vermouth chuckled happily to herself. "It seems he's not related," she said.

It was clever of Kudo to have figured out Kogoro Mouri was listening to the horse races just from his own brief mention of the earphone and then informed them in such a way as to not be suspicious. However…

His eyes took on the glint of hardened steel. "Kill him, along with the kid," he ordered, his voice devoid of emotion or mercy.

It was the voice of a ruthless killer who got results. It was the one he used when he went hunting… when he was serious about taking out a threat… when somebody was definitely going to be killed by his hands. It was the voice of _Jynnan Tonnyx_.

It was a testament to Chianti's and Korn's trust in him that their only response was a willing 'Yes, sir' from Chianti and a readjustment of their sights on their targets. Even Vodka, with his doubts, believed in him enough to play along, "Taking out anything doubtful at its early stage, Aniki?"

But Vermouth… "Hey, wait!" she protested. "He has deep ties with the police! If you kill him without any proof-"

He'd been waiting for something like this. Gin whipped out his gun and pointed it straight at her neck, cutting off her words with a slight gasp of surprise. "You're talkative, Vermouth," he said darkly.

Her surprise disappeared behind her poker face and he glared at her. Unnecessary. Everything she'd said was unnecessary, but continuing to threaten Mouri and Kudo had been his last ploy and Vermouth had snapped. This was exactly who they were supposed to pretend to be, but she had instead been treating Kudo like she was his ally on the inside, like _they_ , the _Organization_ , were her true enemy.

"Is there something between you and that detective?" he said in a low voice. He didn't need to ask her _which_ detective he was referring to.

"Well, what are you going to do if there is?" she challenged.

Her armor was already back up. He wouldn't get any more out of her today, but for the briefest moment, he had seen it: her true face.

"Hmph, no matter…" he said and holstered his Beretta, bringing the microphone back under his observation once more. "Whoever set this up was careless and left their fingerprints behind. After we kill that guy over there, if we go through the people around him, we'll be able to figure out who did this immediately."

On the heels of his words, not even half a second after he'd finished speaking, the gum and microphone disappeared right before his eyes with a metallic 'clink'. He gaped at the now-empty air between his fingers and a louder 'clang' immediately followed coming from the railing next to Korn's left arm.

Korn turned at once, his posture crouched and alert as his eyes fixed on some far distant point. "Behind at 8 o'clock," he said and all of four of them startled. A sniper? Now? Who and how?

Chianti brought her rifle to bear and peered through the scope at the direction Korn had indicated. "It's from that building," she declared. Her rifle was pointing at the tallest one in that direction.

"Impossible! That's over 700 yards away!" Vodka exclaimed.

"Gimme that!" Gin snapped at Korn and swiped the rifle out of his hands.

He didn't care how 'impossible' it was; _somebody_ had shot a two-centimeter-long microphone cleanly out from between his fingers at that distance and he needed to know who it was. He peered through the scope at the top of the building that Chianti had indicated and his eyes widened with shock.

"Shuichi Akai…!" he murmured.

Through the scope, he saw the FBI agent's rifle fire. As if in slow motion, he could see the bullet growing larger and larger in his scope. With a jolt of realization, time sped up and he moved. He had barely managed to move his eye out of the line of the scope's view when the glass shattered in his face and a searing hot burn sliced across his left cheek. He barely registered the shocked gasps from his comrades. That was… way too close… If he'd moved a second later… He'd literally been an inch away from losing an eye, and… considering where the brain was in relation to the eyes, probably his life.

Chianti fired on Akai's position, but she couldn't touch him. She just couldn't hit a target as accurately at that distance. Very few people could and, unfortunately, as the warm stinging in his face from the glass and the bullet could testify, Akai was one of them. Two more bullets struck him in the chest and he stumbled back with a pained grunt. They were caught by the bullet-proof vest he was wearing under his shirt, but the left one had penetrated farther than it should and hit something important. He could recognize the familiar iron taste of blood welling up in his mouth and dripping out the corner. He gripped the left spot tightly, unable to check if blood was actually flowing out, but not willing to risk if it was either. He hadn't counted on Akai's appearance and there was nothing they could do to counterattack against him. They were good and cornered and the only thing they _could_ do was escape with their lives while they were still able.

"A-Aniki," Vodka said worriedly, but Gin ignored him.

"Get out of this place," he ordered, his voice hoarse with pain.

"But… the detective and the kid…?" Chianti trailed off uncertainly.

"Forget about them! Hurry!" he barked.

Nobody needed to be told a third time. They pelted down the fire escape and jumped into the cars waiting for them below. Gin has just barely managed to shut the door behind him when Vodka slammed his foot down on the accelerator and sped out of the side alley as fast as he dared.

Chianti followed them out just as fast and close and he felt some of the tension seep out. Chianti wasn't the only one who would be following them though. Gin gritted his teeth and turned to Vodka. "The FBI's going to set a tail on us, so you're going to have to shake them off fast and perform evasive maneuvers until we're in the clear. Don't worry about Chianti; she's staying close and can react fast to whatever you decide to do. I'm not losing anyone else to them today."

"Okay, but Aniki, who shot you from that roof?" Vodka asked anxiously.

"That was Shuichi Akai," he answered stiffly. "I didn't think he was even involved in this, but he somehow knew we were going to find out about the microphone and transmitter then head on over to the Mouri Detective Agency, and he planned accordingly. He knew long before we even started heading in that direction, otherwise being at the top of that building in the time available cannot be done."

Vermouth laughed quietly. "He sure got the jump on you, though. It sure was kind of him to let you live considering you had no way to defend yourself from his attack and he must have found out by now that you killed his woman."

He could literally hear the accusation dripping in her tone. He snarled and was _this_ close to reaching back and punching her in the face when Vodka abruptly inserted himself in the conversation. "B-But what about Kir?" he said, changing the subject at once. "Doesn't this mean she was definitely captured by the FBI?"

Gin pondered for a moment whether he would allow the topic change or whether he would still try and make Vermouth pay for her insinuation that he'd killed his oldest friend. The sharp pain in the left side of his chest made the decision for him and he let it slide. He was in no fit state to make Vermouth eat her words and Vodka had a valid point.

"Yes, it does," he sighed and reached for the cigarettes in his coat. He really wanted a smoke. "Well, I don't think she'll talk so easily, but I'll definitely find her by whatever means necessary."

He had just pulled out the pack of cigarettes when Vodka smacked his hand and snatched the pack away. Gin stared at him, unable to comprehend what just happened, until Vodka said, "You're not allowed to have any of these until after you get checked out by the medical ward."

Gin's mouth fell open in stunned disbelief. "Are you _trying_ to make me miserable?!" he demanded.

"You're wearing the bullet-proof vest, but that shot to the left side of your chest is causing you a lot more pain than it should be. If you end up needing to go under for surgery or need any kind of sedation, you don't need any other chemicals in your system screwing with the drugs and causing medical complications," Vodka said, sounding surprisingly stern.

He could hardly deny that what Vodka was saying made sense, but it didn't make him any happier to hear it or make his addicted cravings any more bearable while Vodka drove to both lose their American government pursuers and, apparently, take him to the medical ward. He may have finally beaten Vermouth, but he'd had the upper hand and he _still_ felt like they'd lost this round.

()()()()()

"I'm home," Haibara sighed heavily once she finally arrived.

She dropped her backpack next to the coffee table by the couch and plopped herself on it with her legs hanging unlady-like over the couch arms. What a headache. She had not expected she would be helping Kudo try to solve a potential kidnapping case that might have involved the Organization so soon after the big showdown on Saturday nearly a week ago. Of course, it wouldn't have been the actual Organization members, as Kudo feared, but it could have easily been alien abduction or even just a regular kidnapping. Fortunately, it had turned out to be something far less serious. Really though, what was she doing running around like this without a care in the world? She had enemies out there who wanted to get her, and that's why she was hiding as a first-grade student, even if those enemies _weren't_ the Black Organization.

Belatedly, she realized the house was quiet and sat up to listen. It seemed the Professor had gone out somewhere. He would probably be back soon, but that meant she finally had the perfect opportunity to call Gin. She hadn't done so after the events of last Saturday, but with the scare she'd just had today, he was back on her mind. Haibara pulled out her phone and fell back against the couch again, her brown hair laying askew about her head. She punched in the digits for Gin's cell and brought the phone to her ear.

She was so completely relaxed lying sprawled on the couch that she felt she might fall asleep until the phone stopped ringing and the voice on the other end wasn't Gin's deep, rhythmic tones. _"Hello, this is Gin's phone. He's not available at the moment, but I can take a message for him if you'd like."_

It wasn't Gin, but she recognized it all the same. "V-Vodka! It's Sherry, what are you doing with Gin's phone? Where is he?" she spluttered, suddenly wide awake and not the least bit sleepy.

" _Sherry!"_ he exclaimed brightly. _"It's great to hear from you again, I only wish it were under better circumstances."_

Haibara sat bolt upright and held the phone tightly with both hands. "What do you mean 'better circumstances'? What's happened?"

" _Hey, don't be like that,"_ Vodka said soothingly. _"Nothing's wrong, it's just that your timing's bad. Aniki just went into the medical ward a few min-"_

"GIN WENT INTO THE MEDICAL WARD?!" she exploded, one horrible scenario after another flashing before her mind's eye like a never-ending video reel.

" _Yowch! Sherry, Sherry, listen to me! Calm down, he's okay! Gin's fine, okay? I promise I wouldn't lie to you about that. Do you believe me, Sherry?"_

Haibara had to take several deep, calming breaths before she managed to speak again. "Yes… Yes, I believe you, Vodka… I'm sorry… I had a bit of a stressful day today and I just assumed the worst. So… what happened?"

She imagined Vodka was smiling on the other end. _"It's alright, Sherry. I know how much he means to you. Anyway, as I was trying to say, Aniki just went into the medical ward a few minutes ago to get his bandages changed. Before you ask, he was shot by Akai twice with a sniper rifle on Saturday. He was wearing the bullet-proof vest, but one of the bullets hit him weird and ended up piercing his lung anyway. The doctors were able to get it out and seal his lung back up no problem, but Aniki's been in a rotten mood all week because he's not allowed to smoke until his lung has healed and he's been acting like a big baby about getting his bandages changed. It's probably a good thing that you don't have to put up with your pain-in-the-ass fiancé right now, eh Sherry?"_

Haibara's face blushed deep red. "F-f-f-fiancé?! What in the world are you talking about?" she stammered in a high-pitched voice that did absolutely nothing to convince Vodka she was genuinely clueless.

" _Aniki didn't embarrass you by telling me any of the details of your little love fest after I left you guys for the night,"_ Vodka began in a teasing voice that made her blush deepen. _"But the first thing he told me after he dropped you off at home was that you had proposed to him. Granted, he said you'd probably only asked him in the heat of the moment, but I could tell… he was really happy, Sherry."_

Haibara wasn't sure how she wasn't already dead from embarrassment, and yet, there was a small part of her singing with pleasure to hear that Gin was happy she had proposed to him and happy enough that he had told his best friend and partner the first chance he got.

"Thank you, Vodka," she murmured quietly and then shook herself into business mode. "Anyway, I had another reason for calling besides catching up with Gin, so I guess I can tell you and you can tell him for me. Are you guys still searching for Kir?"

" _Yes, we are. We know the FBI captured her, but we haven't figured out where she is yet. We also haven't started making a strong, concerted effort either since Aniki's been recovering from his injury. He keeps trying to start hunting for her behind my back when he thinks I'm not looking, but I won't let him until he's better. If I could trust him to take it easy, I'd let him do a little bit, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what 'taking it easy' even means, so that limits what he's allowed to do."_

Haibara smirked. "So that's the reason for Gin's awful temper? Withdrawal and boredom? It's a wonder he doesn't hate you."

" _Oh, he does, but it's okay,"_ Vodka snickered. _"He was **very** serious about promising to eviscerate me and feed my entrails to the mutant rainbow piranhas of the Himalayan cookie cutter factory when he was still doped up on the anesthesia."_

She burst into a fit of laughter so hard, no sound came out save for short, gasping intakes of breath. And every time she started calming down, imagining her straight-laced, very serious lover saying such utter nonsense just sent her right back into a giggle fit. It continued on like that for at least five minutes before she _really_ managed to get a hold of herself again.

"Thank you for that, Vodka," she said breathlessly. "My sides hurt from laughing too hard, but that was definitely worth it. Have you told him he said that?"

" _I did, but he doesn't believe me, even with the video evidence to prove otherwise. Anyway, I'm sure you know where Kir is being held, but I don't want you to tell us, and I'm sure Gin doesn't either,"_ Vodka said.

"Huh? But why? She's one of us! Shouldn't I help too since I know-?"

" _-Is she being tortured or hurt in any way?"_ he interrupted.

"Er… well, no, but-"

" _-Then you can't tell us, Sherry,"_ he said heavily. _"I know you want to help, but think about it from Kudo's and the FBI's perspective. They know who they're dealing with and they'll have taken precautions to prevent us from finding Kir easily. The fact that the TV station she works at hasn't reported her missing is evidence enough. If only a week after Kir was captured by the FBI, the Black Organization, out of the blue, suddenly knew exactly where she was and came to get her, both the FBI and Kudo would rightfully suspect an inside source to have leaked the information to us. The number of people who knows where she is cannot be a large population, and it would be one that includes you. Don't forget, two of the people this population includes are Shinichi Kudo and Shuichi Akai. They'd eventually either find out something that would cause them to be suspicious of you or would systematically eliminate everyone else who could have done it until you're the only one left. It's just not worth the risk, Sherry. Stay safe and stay hidden. Don't draw attention to yourself."_

Haibara groaned and flopped back against the couch. "It's just so frustrating that I can't do anything while I'm stuck in this place," she moaned.

" _Heh, Aniki's been complaining like that all week,"_ Vodka said with a slight laugh. _"I know it's hard and you want to help, but please hold on a little longer. You won't stay like this forever."_

"You sound like Gin," she grumbled.

" _Well, he's right, so listen to him! Kir will be fine until we can find her and once Aniki's fully recovered, he won't rest until he's gotten her back from the FBI. Aniki has his faults, but his loyalty to the Organization isn't one of them."_

"Hmm, that's true," Haibara hummed in agreement, staring blankly up at the ceiling far above her. "Well, telling you guys about Kir was the main reason why I called, but since you all seem to have everything well in hand and don't need me, I guess I'll just hang up then. Oh, and when you see Gin, you can tell him from me that there's a boy in my class who has a huge crush on me."

" _Hey,_ _Sherry, don't be like that…"_ Vodka groaned, but she ignored him.

"He just about confessed that he likes me in a bit of a roundabout way and he's pretty cute for a seven-year-old," she continued on in the same dry, casual tone. "He's not the tallest in the class, but he's on the taller end for our age group. He has a light dusting of freckles on his cheeks and his hair is brown, cut short, and his bangs seem long, but are evenly parted so they don't hide his eyes. He's quite the gentleman too, well-dressed, very respectful of everyone, and has even solved a few somewhat serious cases that even Kudo didn't pick up on."

" _Sherry, I'm not telling Aniki all of this-!"_

"Oh no, look at the time. If I don't hang up right this instant, I won't get all of my very difficult and mentally-stimulating homework finished and then I'll have to go to bed without supper. How awful. Goodbye," she said and hung up before Vodka could get another word in edgewise.

She tossed the phone above her head to the far side of the couch and laid her arm over her eyes with a great sigh. She knew she had been unfair to Vodka and he didn't deserve her vitriol, especially not if Gin was also being an asshole, but she was tired. Tired of being cautious and careful. Tired of being small and weak. Tired of lying. Tired of being cut off from the world she still belonged to. And most of all, tired of being unable to do anything to help _anyone_. She just wanted to be useful; was that too much to ask? Apparently so, and the only way she could be useful was as a resource about the Black Organization and by creating an antidote to the shrinking effect of APTX-4869. It wasn't until Dr. Agasa returned home that Haibara managed to rouse herself enough to sit up and quickly get her tediously boring homework done with before she helped the Professor with making dinner. Or maybe she'd let him splurge and they'd go out for dinner tonight. She didn't care either way.

()()()()()

Meanwhile, back at the Organization's medical ward, Vodka stared dumbstruck at the phone in his hands that was now beeping as a result of the disconnected call. He was so confused. One minute, everything seemed normal and they were getting along fine and the next, Sherry was going on about some boy that was crushing on her and hung up without warning. He pressed the End Call button to stop the beeping. Gin hadn't been allowed to take his phone with him when he was getting x-rays of his chest taken to see if his lungs were healing alright.

Vodka was still holding it with the screen flipped open when the door to the medical ward slammed open and he jumped. Gin was standing in the doorway only half-dressed and missing the bandages on his chest. He looked both as haggard as a zombie and 100% completely murderous. In short, he was pissed and it was a small miracle he hadn't actually killed anyone yet. Vodka wasn't sure if he'd be at the bottom of Gin's hit list because he was one of Gin's few living friends, or if he'd be at the top because he was the main one preventing him from doing things that needed to be done. Gin's green eyes focused on him and zeroed in on his phone in his hands.

He stalked over to him, the murderous aura as intense as ever, and snatched it out of his hands. "They're done with the x-rays," he growled by way of explanation, then narrowed his eyes suspiciously at him. "What were you doing with my phone?"

"Sherry called, so I answered it for you," he replied.

At the mere mention of Sherry, it was like watching sunshine breaking through dark storm clouds. Light seemed to come back to those dark green eyes and the furious intensity faded down into a quiet simmer. He still looked miserable and it was incredibly disheartening seeing him like this, but at least Gin no longer looked like he was going to kill someone for mentioning it. "Sherry called? What did she say? What did she want? Is she okay?" Gin asked, rattling off one question after another.

"Yeah, just a few minutes ago. She freaked out when I mentioned you were in the medical ward, but I explained that you were fine and were just getting bandages changed." Vodka grimaced, "Actually, I also mentioned that you've been in a bad mood all week because you've been suffering from withdrawal and I won't let you run yourself into the ground to look for Kir yet."

Gin looked mildly annoyed at the reminder, but didn't bite his head off this time. Slight improvement. "And? What about Sherry? Why did she call this time?"

"Honestly, she called to tell us where the FBI is hiding Kir," he answered.

Immediately, Gin's eyes shot wide open and he lashed out, gripping his shoulders fiercely. His eyes were wild and he looked quite deranged. "Vodka, you didn't-!" Gin began.

"-No, I stopped her before she could tell me!" he reassured him quickly. "I even explained to her that with both Shinichi Kudo _and_ Shuichi Akai working together on the same team and in-the-know about Kir's whereabouts, the risk of her being found out for revealing the location would be too great. She…" Here, Vodka hesitated. "She didn't seem to like hearing that. Her tone became all dry and cold and insincere – you know, the one she uses when she wants to be cruel? And she went off about this boy in class who's apparently crushing on her? I don't know if it's true or not, but the way she was talking about him, I think she either wanted to hurt you or make you jealous or both. She hung up right after that."

The light that had appeared briefly in Gin's eyes seemed to have gone out, but the rage monster hadn't returned. In fact, there didn't seem to be any tension left. Even his face was slack and Vodka found himself more terrified of this new Gin than he had been of the angry one. Gin in an unreasonable temper was something that came with the territory when you worked night and day with the man and had been working with him long enough to see him drunk off his ass several times. An angry Gin was nothing that Vodka couldn't handle, but he didn't recognize the Gin standing before him now. He looked… defeated… if that was even a word he could use to describe his partner.

Without warning, Gin sank into the chair next to him and clasped his head in his hands. His hair fell like a curtain around his face and he gripped his ash-blond hair by the roots. He said nothing and Vodka found himself at a loss for what to do. Tentatively wondering if he would regret this move, he slowly reached out with one hand and lightly touched Gin's shoulder. When Gin didn't shrug him off, Vodka let his palm cover the other's bare shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze.

"Aniki, after we get Kir back, I think we need to make getting Sherry back our next priority," he said gently.

"We can't. Her life's in danger here and she has to stay to protect the scientist," Gin said tonelessly, his voice muffled by his long hair. The words sounded rehearsed.

"Then we find out who's after Sherry and the scientist, we stop them, and Sherry can come home," he countered.

"It's not… that simple…" Gin muttered.

Vodka raised an eyebrow. "Why not? Hunting down aliens is what we do for a living. What makes this any different because Sherry's involved?"

Gin didn't have an answer for him and that was proof that the tall man wasn't in his right mind.

"You've been in contact with her more than I have since she went into hiding, but just now when I was talking to her, she sounded like she was really hurting. I think Sherry feels useless being stuck where she is. She can't do anything to get out of the situation she's been forced into, so we have to help her. You're not doing her or yourself any favors by letting her stay in an isolated bubble, thinking it will protect her. You didn't fall in love with Sherry because she was a pretty, dutiful young girl that obeyed your directions without question and willingly sat on the sidelines of the action so that you could protect her."

Gin's shoulder twitched and Vodka wondered if he'd gone too far when he saw Gin's pale right hand reach up and cover his. He gave it a brief squeeze, a thank you, and then raised his head straight up. Gin still looked gaunt and woebegone, but there was a spark of life back in his eyes and he looked more like his normal self than he had all week.

"You're right, Vodka," he said simply and stood tall, still staring straight ahead. "Sherry needs us. We're the only hope she has of getting out of her current situation and it's not fair to her to let her stagnate in isolation because of my own fears. Vodka!"

Vodka jumped at being addressed so suddenly and sharply. "Yes?"

"I will find Kir and get her back from the FBI. Then after I do, I will do whatever it takes to bring Sherry back home," he vowed, his voice overflowing with strength and determination.

Vodka smiled and stood up with him. "And I'll do whatever I can to help you make that happen," he promised right back then smirked briefly and pointed at the medical ward door. "Which means you have to go back in there to get bandages back on so you can heal quickly."

In an instant, Gin's fierce lion-like loyalty and pride vanished and he was back to scowling like a petulant toddler. "There's hardly anything there, what's _even_ the goddamned point of…" he muttered darkly nonstop under his breath as he stomped back to the medical ward, threw the door open, and tromped inside. Vodka did not envy the doctors one bit.

* * *

 _I think... I may have ended up making Chianti either a lesbian or bisexual. I can't tell which, but I kinda like it._

 _I was actually really excited to write Kir this chapter because she's one of my favorites and it saddens me somewhat that her character seems to be shelved as of late. She was the first NOC we found out about that's still in the Organization and yet, Bourbon seems to have taken her place as the important NOC of interest, just as Akai seems to have replaced Jodie as the important FBI agent of interest. Those women were first and doing some pretty smart, badass, dangerous stuff; you don't have to ignore them just because they don't have the same overly-brilliant detective mindset as Conan. Okay, mini-rant over._

 _I haven't decided yet if the next chapter will be filler fluff to give a break from all of the intense stuff that's been happening or if I'm going to jump right into the "Clash of Red and Black" set of episodes._


	8. Three Days with Heiji Hattori: Part 1

**Author's Note: Brief warning, I don't know anything about guns or shooting, so please don't point them out because I don't care enough to make any corrections on that score. This chapter and the next are mostly filler chapters to help break up the plot a bit. Gin and Sherry are actually behaving nicely for once.  
**

 **This and the next chapter take place along the timeline of "Three Days with Heiji Hattori", episode 479, but don't occur anywhere close to where the events of those episodes took place.  
**

* * *

Three Days with Heiji Hattori: Part 1

"Well, well, well, it looks like you're finally making some good progress on finding Kir, even without my help," Haibara said into the cellphone at her ear with a smug smirk on her face. "But I'm surprised at you, Gin. I didn't think it would take you this long to find out she got into an accident while being chased by the FBI and is now in a coma."

" _I was exploring all potential options and I might have found her sooner if I'd been allowed to investigate her disappearance as soon as it occurred instead of several weeks later,"_ Gin said bitterly.

"Now, Gin, there's no reason for you to be so grumpy about it. Vodka was only looking out for you and making sure you didn't run yourself ragged while you were still recovering," she said placatingly and sat herself down in her favorite chair by the TV. "Akai got the better of you this time, but now you're aware he's around and active, and you'll be better prepared for him at the next confrontation. Your lung has since healed up just fine and I'm sure you're back to chain smoking like you'll die if you don't. Your pride was the only thing that suffered a serious blow."

" _What are you, my psychiatrist now?"_

She quirked an eyebrow, still smiling. "I can be, but then you'd have to start paying me to psychoanalyze you and write up drug prescriptions."

" _Sherry, you already do that for fun."_

Haibara giggled behind her hand. "Hm, so I do. So, when are you going to start paying me again?"

" _I'd rather pay you for something far more enjoyable than that."_

Haibara felt herself blush a little, but kept it out of her voice. "Now, Gin, behave or I won't tell you the _real_ reason I called this time."

" _Hm? What's that?"_ he asked.

Haibara's smile widened and she reached up to twirl a stray strand of hair between her fingers. "Well, it just so happens that Heiji Hattori and his not-girlfriend childhood friend, Kazuha Toyama, will be visiting Kudo and Ran from Osaka this weekend and they made plans to go temple viewing while they're here. It'll be an all-day event, then Hattori and Toyama will return to Osaka early the next morning."

" _Ohh? Do tell."_

"You wouldn't be aware of this, but every time Kudo and Hattori end up together in the same place, a big case always occurs that requires the both of them to put their heads together to solve it and they always end up spending more time together than they intended. A planned half-day event quite easily manages to turn into a full-day or even a day-and-a-half long case," Haibara explained with an amused chuckle. "There's no way Kudo will find me with someone I'm not supposed to be with, if you can spare the time that is."

" _Kir's in a hospital somewhere in a coma, but she's not going anywhere any time soon, now is she? I believe I can spare some time from the search for her."_ She could hear the smirk in his voice as he spoke. _"So, shall I pick you up at your place Friday morning and expect another twenty-four hours in your company, Sherry?"_

Haibara's heart soared like a balloon full of hot air. "Yes, and since I now know that the antidote will only last twenty-four hours and know exactly where Kudo will be and what he'll be doing, I won't take the drug until after you pick me up and I want to go out and do something that I never get to do as a kid."

" _Well, there's a lot that you can't do as a kid because you're either not old enough, big enough, or mature enough. I already know one of the things we're doing, but that's a given, so are you going to give me a hint as to this other thing you want to do?"_

"Actually… there are _two_ things, but first: do you still have my Harley and my gear?"

" _Your…?"_ he started in surprise and then groaned. _"Sherry, you know how much I hate you riding that infernal thing."_

"I'll take that as a 'yes', then. You like seeing me in my tight-skinned riding gear well enough."

" _That's literally the only good thing about your love of motorcycles."_

"Well, too bad, because I want to race you: you with your Porsche and me with my Harley, just like we did for my eighteenth birthday." A challenging glint came into her blue-green eyes. "Unless you've no longer got the nerve and don't want to risk your precious baby getting a scratch on her perfect, polished paint job."

If Gin were a bird, she was sure his feathers would be ruffled. _"You're on, Sherry. Just don't expect me to go easy on you, love."_

"I'd be insulted if you did," Haibara scoffed. "But apart from that and the long-night ravaging I'm expecting, there's one other thing I want to do. Don't worry, you'll like this one: I want you to take me to a shooting range. I haven't even held a gun since the day I first met Conan and I'm worried my skills will get rusty."

" _I'm not,"_ Gin said and she could tell he was smiling softly. _"You may have already learned the basics of how to shoot by the time I got to you, but I taught you how to apply those skills in real time and helped improve your accuracy. If that's what you want though, I'd be more than happy to find a shooting range for you. Want me to find the type I first taught you in?"_

Haibara felt a thrill of excitement and nodded vigorously. "Yes, definitely," she said. "Would you mind picking me up around 10 o'clock on Friday?"

" _It would be my pleasure, Sherry. I'll see you on Friday then. In the meantime, stay safe."_

"You too, Gin. I love you, bye."

" _Bye, Sherry."_

She ended the call and as soon as she did, she nearly squealed with delight and spun around in a circle hugging herself tightly. She was going on a date, a _real_ date, for the first time in months and she would get to see Gin as herself again! As Shiho Miyano, not Ai Haibara! It was pure luck that she found out from Kudo that Hattori was coming to visit and spend the whole day with him and his timing could _not_ have been more perfect! Oh, but she would have to go out and buy a new outfit to wear for the date. The red dress she first arrived in was _still_ the only thing she had that would fit her as Shiho Miyano, and that just wouldn't do. She still loved the fancy dress Gin had gotten for her and let her wear the last time she'd been with him, but she needed something more casual for this particular date. Well, there was no rush. She had plenty of time to go shopping and find something that suited both her plans for the day and her impeccable sense of style.

()()()()()

"Hey, guys, does Ai seem happier than usual lately?" Ayumi asked her friends Mitsuhiko and Genta after they had parted ways from Haibara and Conan.

"She does, doesn't she?" Mitsuhiko said thoughtfully.

"Yeah, she didn't scold me like she usually does when I got eel rice all over my shirt again today," Genta exclaimed.

"I wonder what happened to put her in such a good mood," Ayumi said aloud, looking skyward.

"Conan's been in a good mood all this week too," Mitsuhiko pointed out, looking suddenly worried. "Do you think that's somehow related to Haibara?"

"No way!" Ayumi said so forcefully, Mitsuhiko and Genta both took a frightened step back from the tiny girl. "I noticed that about Conan too, so I asked him. He said that Heiji and Kazuha were coming to visit this Friday and they were all going temple-viewing."

"Well, it looks like that's not it," Genta said with an annoyed huff.

"That's true…" Mitsuhiko said with a relieved sigh. "But we do have a long weekend since we don't have school on Friday this week. Maybe she made plans too?"

"Keh, plans without us? We're her friends, aren't we? What could she be doing that doesn't involve us this weekend?" Genta said skeptically.

"Genta, you make it sound like Ai's not allowed to be having fun unless she's with us," Ayumi laughed.

"You sure do," Mitsuhiko agreed with a smile. "But this is good, right? Remember when Haibara first transferred into our class? She was so serious, it seemed like she'd never had fun in her life, and now look at her!"

"Yeah, let's have her tell us what she does over the weekend when we go back to school on Monday," Genta suggested.

"Yeah!" Mitsuhiko and Ayumi agreed with enthusiastic shouts.

()()()()()

Friday morning had arrived crisp and bright and just like the last time she'd gone out with Gin, Haibara packed a bag of child-sized clothes, which also included the one adult-sized set that she would be wearing during her date today, and left the house to stand at the corner street where Gin would pick her up. She kept glancing down both ends of the street for any sign of the black Porsche and checking her watch only to find maybe a minute had passed since she last looked. It was incredibly frustrating and it didn't help that she was feeling sick. Of course, the only reason for that was due to the drug she'd taken about an hour ago to induce cold-like symptoms, otherwise the prototype antidote wouldn't work. At least the symptoms would be gone when she transformed back into an adult. Haibara was so preoccupied, she somehow completely missed seeing Gin's car turn onto the street, but there was no missing either the engine's distinctive noise or the two short horn honks. Her face broke into an excited grin and she waved at him.

He gave her a quick wave back, but didn't take his hands off the wheel again until he'd stopped the car right in front of her and got out. "Sherry," he said fondly as he knelt down in front of her.

It was good that he did. She didn't have to humiliate herself by having him demand to pick her up like a needy child in order to hug him properly. However, just as she moved to do so, she halted and stared at his face with wide, surprised eyes. "Gin, what happened?"

His own eyes widened slightly. "What?"

She pointed. "That new scar across your left cheek, how did you get it?"

His expression instantly changed from startled to annoyed. "Oh, that. I forgot you haven't seen me since I got it. Akai nicked me with a sniper round from 700 yards away in our most recent encounter with him the same day Kir was captured. I nearly lost my eye instead."

"Oh…" she breathed, staring thoughtfully at the new scar for a second more before she threw her arms around his neck and his own came around and engulfed her small body.

"I'm glad you came," she sighed happily.

"It's good to see you too, Sherry," he murmured into her ear then drew back to gaze down at her. "Come on. Let's get you back to your normal self so the real date can begin."

"Alright, but I have to ask you to take me somewhere relatively deserted before I can do that. I need to be able to change into adult clothes before I take the antidote, otherwise I'll ruin the clothes I'm wearing now," Haibara explained.

Gin smirked and stood tall and impressive in his black long-coat. "I think I can manage something like that. Do you prefer the back seat or the passenger seat?"

Haibara moved forward and pulled on the lever that would move the driver's seat forward and allow a person enough room to be able to slip into the back. "I'll have more room back here for the transformation, but don't worry…" She shot him a playful smirk just before she climbed into the back. "I'll move back into the front to keep you company once I'm an adult again."

And with that, Haibara finished getting into the car and Gin returned the front seat to its previous position before getting in himself. She waited until she heard the engine turnover and saw the scenery outside begin to move before delving into her clothes bag.

"Sherry, is that _another_ Fusae designer bag? How many of those do you have now?" Gin asked in astonishment.

Haibara blushed and scowled at the back of his head. "Shut up and keep your eyes on the road. You're driving."

"Seriously, Sherry, I think you had at least four when you left and I still don't know why you even had _that_ many, so what could you possibly need another one for? Or are you just collecting them as a new hobby of yours?"

"You're a man, you wouldn't understand," she muttered evasively, still blushing as she finished pulling out the clothes she would be changing into.

She peeked out the side window, but didn't see any other traffic on the road, and then glanced back at Gin, but his eyes were still focused on the road. Feeling ridiculous and a little annoyed at herself for being so hesitant, she exhaled sharply and pulled her shirt off. She had the body of a child and nobody could see her, but there was no reason for her to be so embarrassed about being naked in the first place. She hadn't been this shy about her body since… since Gin first made love to her three years ago, and her cheeks flushed an even darker red at the memory as she hooked the bra together at the back. It hung loose now, but she'd fill out into it once she was back in her adult body. Then she slipped on the new shirt she'd bought: a white and dark gray, horizontal-striped, long-sleeved shirt. Naturally, she was swimming in it, but she pulled up the sleeves until her hands were free and took off both her shorts and underwear. She put on the bigger underwear and khaki-colored capris at the same time because there was no way they were going to stay on at this size without holding them up.

"Alright, Sherry, does this place look deserted enough for you?" Gin asked suddenly.

She startled and looked around. They appeared to be at some kind of empty construction lot for a new building and she nodded. "Yes, this will do. You can park here."

No sooner said than done, Gin killed the engine and half-turned to face her. He took one look at the too-large clothes she had put on and arched an eyebrow. "So, if you didn't want a deserted place to change clothes, why'd you have me bring you here?"

From within her bag, she fished around for a bit until her hand finally closed around a plastic bottle and pulled it out for Gin to see. The bottle was labeled as medicine, but the contents were actually the white-capsuled APTX-4869 antidote. She held it up and Gin's eyes obediently fixed upon it, his brow furrowing slightly.

"You've seen me go through the transformation process from Shiho to Haibara twice now," she said in a low, solemn voice. "Going the other way isn't any better and I don't want to distract you while you're driving."

His face contorted and worry flickered briefly in those green eyes of his. "Sherry-"

"-Don't," she cut him off sharply. "It won't help."

She opened the lid of the medicine bottle and shook one of the capsules into her open palm. The antidote in hand, she took just enough time to reseal the medicine bottle and shove it back into her bag before forcing the white capsule down her throat. Five seconds of silence, then the familiar bone-shattering explosion wracked her tiny body. She screamed and clutched at her chest frantically, her heart being the starting point of her agony. She had been through this transformation process five times already, but it didn't make going through it _this_ time any easier to bear. She closed her eyes both because of the pain and to block out Gin's horrified gaze. The pulsing spasms grew more frequent and more intense, along with the squeezing tightness that compressed her tighter still. Just as she thought she could no longer bear it and would surely crack, the pressure snapped back and she suddenly expanded, the stretching, ripping sensation of every muscle, bone, ligament, tendon, and organ in her body forcing pained tears to her eyes. It stopped as suddenly as it had begun, mercifully over, and all that was left was the pain still lingering in her body. She wearily noted that she'd sprawled across the entire back seat and was panting heavily. At least it was mercifully quick, unlike the transformation back to childhood that she knew awaited her in about twenty-four hours.

"Shiho! Shiho, talk to me!"

Who was shout-? A hand suddenly gripped her shoulder tightly- _Ohh_ right, Gin was here. As she felt herself starting to be turned over onto her side, she finished rolling all the way over onto her back and smiled weakly up at Gin. His green irises were tiny pinpricks of fear and he looked just as pale and shaky as he did the first night he watched her shrink. It seemed watching her transformations didn't get any easier for him either. She reached out and cupped his cheek with her right hand, her thumb brushing over the new scar there.

"There's no need to look at me like that. I'm okay now," she said between breaths.

Gin sighed heavily and with the hand still holding onto her shoulder, he pulled her up into a sitting position. His other hand drew a handkerchief out of his left pocket and he began dabbing the sweat off her face.

"Gin, come on-" she protested with a slight laugh.

"-Stay still." His voice was cold and sharp and his expression was inscrutable. Sherry fell silent at once, letting him work. After he finished, he put the cloth away and caught the back of her head at the nape of her neck with his large hand. He brought her close and she thought he might kiss her, but instead, he pressed his forehead against hers and simply held her. "I don't like seeing you in pain like that," he said eventually, his breath warm on her face.

She nodded slightly, brushing his nose with hers as she did so. "I know," she admitted just as quietly. Then… "You climbed into the back?"

Gin sniffed in mild amusement. "Had to, didn't I?"

"No."

"Wanted to then," he amended, and he was definitely smiling now that she no longer looked, sounded, or felt like she was dying.

Sherry chuckled and with her hand still laying upon Gin's face, she tilted her head back a notch and gently kissed those thin, pale lips of his. He returned hers just as leisurely, if not a bit more demanding per his personality. There was no sense of urgency in their kiss nor any hint of the sexual tension that had consumed them with the first kiss of their previous reunion. There was only tender affection to be found. Admittedly, the lingering pain and horror of the recent transformation may have played a big part in killing any immediate desire to act upon their more primal urges.

Sherry pulled back after a while and offered her lover a sly smile. "Now that I'm an adult again, isn't there a shooting range you're supposed to be taking me to?" she asked.

"At least you bounce back quickly," he muttered and turned around to climb back into the driver's seat. "It'll take us over two hours to get to the place I found. It's far from here, but closer to the location where we'll be racing later, so I hope you don't mind."

"No, no, I don't mind at all," she said somewhat distractedly. While there was no doubt she had filled out into her clothes after transforming, she still had to make a few adjustments for them to fit comfortably on her body.

After that was done, she climbed through the middle and slid down into the passenger's seat next to Gin. He eyed her wardrobe choice appreciatively. "You look nice, though I'm somewhat surprised at the lack of red."

Sherry shrugged and reached into the back for her clothes bag to retrieve the shoes she would be wearing: white loafers. "This was what I felt like this time. Besides, my hair should have enough natural red in it to satisfy your fascination with the color. May I assume my Harley was brought near the racing location as well?" she asked as Gin drove out of the empty construction lot.

"Yes, I had Vodka drive that evil contraption of yours, so it's ready and waiting, and in good shape."

"'Evil' is a strong word," she said, giving Gin a reproachful look.

In response, Gin gave her a side-eye. "Kir's in a coma right now because she got into an accident with a motorcycle, remember?"

Sherry waved it off. "She was being chased by the FBI, that's a special circumstance."

" _Sherry_ ," he said in a warning tone.

"Gin, I know how to drive it and I'm not reckless!" she groaned. "Do you think I don't know how much more dangerous it is for motorcyclists on the road compared to cars? I heard it all from Akemi before she even let me get the bike!"

Gin didn't appear to react to her outburst, but he didn't say anything either, at least not immediately. When he spoke again, his tone was unusually somber. "I have to worry about you, Sherry, even more so since your sister's passing. Do you remember how she felt about my feelings towards you? Akemi didn't approve of my interest because you were so young at the time and I was so much older than you."

Sherry nodded. "I remember. She had a fit when I told her the first time you kissed me. I didn't realize she'd react so badly, so I started getting sneaky and didn't tell her anything about my relationship with you after that."

"You _told_ her?! No wonder she found out so fast!" he exclaimed in astonishment. "She was much kinder to you than she was to me. She just about had a conniption when she finally cornered me about seducing her sweet, innocent, naïve baby sister, and that was just for a kiss. She was a terror when she discovered I had started sleeping with you. To this day, I still have no idea how she found out so quickly."

"Akemi didn't mention anything to me about it!" Sherry said, surprised to hear this.

Unfortunately, she could easily think of how Akemi made that discovery without her telling. Back then, Akemi's and Akai's relationship had been very serious at the time, and Sherry _may_ have borrowed a few of her sister's birth control pills until she had her own, but she wasn't going to tell Gin that. It wasn't like it mattered anymore anyway…

"Well, that's the only time I was ever legitimately afraid of your sister," Gin sighed morosely. "If I was going to go that far with you, I had to be serious about wanting a real relationship with you, and not just using you for sex, because you really were too young to know better. Akemi promised a very slow, painful death for me if I failed to treat you right or ever broke your heart. Your sister entrusted me with your safety and well-being, and I never once fell short of her expectations where you were concerned. Even now, I feel that if I let you get hurt under my care, I would be letting her down from beyond the grave."

Sherry looked down at her lap, lost in thought. Akemi and Gin had been friends before she'd even met the man and she knew that friendship had been strained due to Akemi's dislike for his pursuit of her, but she had no idea how perceptive Akemi had been of everything going on or how protective she'd been of her.

"I miss her," she said quietly after a bit.

He didn't say anything, but his right hand reached over and squeezed her knee. He missed her too.

None of the other topics they discussed in the car on the way to the shooting range were nearly as heavy-hearted as the one about Akemi had been. They even got into an argument about soccer teams: _"What do you mean you support Big Osaka? You've never cared about soccer before! Don't tell me it's because of that new player, Ryuusuke Higo!"_

While a 2.5-hour drive wasn't a short one, it had at least been tolerable, even somewhat pleasant given her present company. The shooting range Gin had apparently found was in the mountains just outside the local town. Gin stopped the car and she got out, gazing at the outside of the building with a skeptical expression. The building looked old and was starting to show signs of wear on the roof and walls in particular. One of the letters in the building's name sign was missing the outer cover. Despite the careworn appearance, there were still a hefty number of cars in the parking lot.

"It doesn't look all that impressive on the outside, does it?" she commented.

"Well, you asked for me to find one similar to where I first took you and I'm sure you remember what kind of place _that_ was," Gin said with a sly smirk and pulled out a large black briefcase that had been hiding under his seat.

Sherry arched her eyebrow and gave him a smirk of her own. "My dear Gin, you're not going to be gambling, are you?" she cooed.

He placed the briefcase on the roof of the car and leaned on it himself. "Is that not the reason you specifically wanted me to find a place like last time? I wasn't able to participate in the gambling going on then because I was actually teaching you how to shoot properly, but _now_ , you want to kick ass, take names, and win some easy money while doing so. Am I wrong?"

She shook her head happily. "No, you're correct, as usual. Since first impressions and appearances are everything, how do you recommend we enter in there in such a way that I get a strong odds difference against me and we make the most of your money?"

Gin's brow furrowed in concentration as he stared at her. Silently, he beckoned her to come around the car to where he was standing and she did so. His eyes scrutinized her whole figure with the objective detachment of an officer taking in information and strategizing how to make the best use of it.

Slowly, the crease of his brow eased up until it vanished behind his thick bangs. "I know what we'll do, Sherry," he said at last.

He approached her and leaned down to whisper in her ear what the plan was. She listened, occasionally nodding, and her expression slowly brightened with excitement.

After he finished describing the plan, he pulled back slightly and met her eyes. "Understood?"

"Yes, sir," she said with a cheeky smile. "I can't wait to put it into action."

"Good, and while we're in there, I'll be Kenzo Saya and you'll-"

"-I'll be Elena Shinran," she said preemptively.

Gin raised an eyebrow. "Your mother's name and the combined first names of Mr. Kudo and Miss. Mouri?"

"Don't judge me. You picked Pisco's first name for yours," she said with a deadpan glare.

Gin ignored her retort. "Well, shall we be on our way, Sherry?"

"Give me a moment to get in-character. I'm not used to playing a meek, defenseless little damsel in distress."

"No, I don't think anybody has ever used those words to describe you," he snickered.

Sherry tuned everything out and focused only on the persona she wanted to adopt: defensive, a bit snappy, weak, scared, defeated. It was almost the exact opposite of how she perceived herself and though she was a little bit nervous, she was more intrigued by the idea of playing someone different. No wonder Gin enjoyed pretending to be a dangerous assassin so much.

"Okay, I'm ready. Let's get this show on the road," she said at last, a determined look in her blue-green eyes.

()()()()()

"Oi, oi, Ume, you're not usually this bad a shot. You're not letting me win on purpose, are you?"

The man being addressed, Ume Tatsuya, glanced over at his companion and best friend since high school, Shiro Wada, and shrugged indifferently. "I told you before you even picked me up that I didn't feel like coming."

Wada harrumphed and activated the safety lock on the semi-automatic pistol he was holding before setting it down. Wada was a good deal taller than him, but not nearly as broad. Despite being nearly twenty-five now, he still had the scrawny, gangly look of your average teenage boy, yet he was deceptively strong for his appearance. "And I told _you_ when I came that you can't spend the rest of your life in your apartment moping about that damn woman," Wada said pointedly. "You're too soft, I've said it a million times already, and I also say you're well shot of her. You don't need a controlling bitch like her in your life."

"Don't talk about Hitomi like that!" Tatsuya snapped automatically.

Wada rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine, I'll wait 'til you're finally over her before I start insulting her to your face. Come ooon, Ume, you have a gun – you can vent everything out without actually killing anyone. Well, I'm out, so I'm gonna go buy us some more magazines. You can wait here if you'd like."

"No, I'll come," Tatsuya said. He activated the safety on his own pistol before hurrying after his friend.

He had just joined Wada at the counter, when the door opened and two people came in, a man and a woman. He only intended to give them a quick glance, but he found his eyes riveted on the pair. The man, who walked just ahead of the woman, was dressed almost entirely in black from his hat to the long-coat to his shoes and he carried a large black briefcase in his left hand. He was _tall_ , much taller than Wada even, and he could have easily been 185 cm tall. His hair was like nothing he'd ever seen on another man before. It was long and straight, reaching all the way down to the man's thighs and it was a very light blond, nearly silver. It didn't even look like it had been dyed or bleached that pale. Between his height and his hair, there was no way this man wasn't mixed-race. He couldn't be completely foreign because when Tatsuya finally saw his eyes, barely visible behind long, thick bangs, their shape was Japanese even though their color was dark green. As soon as he saw them though, he wished he didn't know what this man's eyes looked like. They were bottomless, unfeeling, icy chasms that promised death to any who gazed into them. Tatsuya had never given it a thought before, but he was certain that if demons ever walked among mankind and took on a human form, they would look like this man did. He was so distracted by the demon man's arrival that he didn't even realize he was coming right over to the counter where he and Wada were both standing.

"Shiro, hurry up and let's get back!" he whispered desperately under his breath.

"Don't lose your nerve, Ume!" Wada hissed back, but his own fear of this black-clothed menace betrayed him in his voice. "B-Besides, he's going to the other guy working the counter. We're fine."

He turned back to finish buying the extra magazines for their weapons, leaving Tatsuya to stare in stupefied horror as the man in black approached the other counter worker just to the left of where they were standing. The employee gulped and stammered. "W-Welcome, how m-may I help you today, sir?" Tatsuya felt _so_ sorry for the poor man.

The man in black didn't answer, but stared up at the board on the back wall instead. After a while, his eyes narrowed and a smirk tweaked the corner of his mouth. A dreadful shudder ran down Tatsuya's spine at the sight.

"You're in luck, Elena," he said. His voice was deep and rough, and his speech had an odd rhythmic cadence to it that might have been described as soothing if it didn't sound as black as sin. He cocked his head to the side and the smirk had widened into a full-on grin. A predator's smile. "They have the Smith & Wesson Model 5906 that you so prefer."

Tatsuya had been so narrowly-focused on the green-eyed demon that he completely forgot that he hadn't come into the building alone. The woman was standing to the right of the man in black and slightly behind him. Now that he could see her up close, he realized how young she looked, like a girl fresh out of high school or maybe even still in her third year. She was slightly taller than the average Japanese woman, but still dwarfed by the impressive height of the man next to her. Her clothes were nothing eye-catching: just a white and dark gray horizontal-striped long-sleeve shirt and khaki-colored capris, but her hair more than made up for her plain clothing choice. It was a wavy bob cut, a direct contrast to her companion's long locks, and a unique, gorgeous brownish-red color. He'd never seen anything like it before and it seemed to be her natural hair color. Or at least the roots of her hair didn't indicate otherwise. Was she also mixed-race? She must be; Elena wasn't a Japanese name, but she didn't look much like a foreigner. The color of her eyes was a strange greenish-blue color and Tatsuya found himself staring avidly at her. She was incredibly beautiful, but her expression seemed so… closed off… like there was nothing residing behind those greenish-blue eyes.

At being addressed by the man in black, she looked at the board that he had been reading from and quirked an eyebrow. "So they do," she said. Tatsuya found himself somewhat taken aback. Her voice was cold and sharp, and just as emotionless as her expression. Was that normal for a girl her age? "And how much is it going to cost me for you to actually let me use my preferred weapon of choice, Saya?" Her tone was still very dry and deadpan, but there was no mistaking the bitter snap that had edged its way in at the end. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. This would not end well.

It happened so fast, he didn't even see really see it, despite standing right next to the two. One minute, the man and woman were at a standstill next to each other. The next, the young woman was shoved forcefully against the counter with the tall man's right arm pressing against the back of her shoulders pinning her to the counter and his left hand clenched tightly around her left wrist pulling her arm straight back. The black briefcase clattered loudly to the ground when it fell. The young woman cried out in terrible agony and Tatsuya found himself physically torn between rushing to her aide and running as far away as possible in the opposite direction. His body compromised between his two desires by not moving at all.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please, I won't do it again!" she whimpered frantically.

The man in black gave a soft sigh. "You don't even know what you're apologizing for, do you, Elena?" He pushed on her left shoulder joint.

" _Ahh!_ Please, let go! You're going to dislocate my shoulder!" she screamed anew.

"Remember, that's _Mr._ Saya to you, my dear. I _do_ like your spirit, but your debt has not even been half-paid yet, so you could stand to be a _little_ more respectful to the man whose money allowed you to save your sister's life," he said in low, even tones. "But regarding your question about how much it will cost you to use your preferred weapon, since this is a gun you know well and are comfortable with, I expect you to bring in double- no, _triple_ your normal quota: 150,000 yen."

A shocked gasp escaped her. "150,000?! But that's impossible! I'm not skilled enough to get good odds and win that much. Please, Mr. Saya- _Ahhhh!_ " Her desperate plea was cut off by another pained outcry as Saya pulled her left arm up even higher.

"Well, it doesn't matter to me either way, but it's truly for your own good, Elena. The longer it takes you to pay me back, the longer you remain in my employ, and I was under the impression you wanted nothing to do with me." Those green eyes glittered maliciously and the feral grin from earlier returned. "Unless, perhaps, you've changed your mind and would now be willing to accept my alternative offer?" he continued, his voice even lower and more dangerous still. "You'll pay off your debt much faster that way, I assure you."

Tatsuya had no idea how she managed to do it, with the amount of pressure being applied to her arm and shoulder, or _why_ she chose to, but Elena glanced backward over her shoulder at Saya with such fire burning in her eyes, it was a wonder that Saya wasn't scorched in an instant. "I stand by my decision when you first proposed it to me. My answer has not changed," she said clearly, without even a hint of a tremor in her voice despite the incredible pain she must have been in.

Saya shrugged his shoulders, but his grin remained as a wicked smirk. "Have it your way then, but if you fail to make your quota today…" He leaned forward over her body and whispered directly into her ear.

Tatsuya was standing fairly close, but still nowhere close enough for him to hear what that awful man was saying to her. However, he would have to be blind to miss the paralyzed, fear-stricken expression that came over her face and the satisfied expression on his when he pulled back and finally released her. Her left arm snapped around to her front like a rubber band and she backed away from the counter and Saya, holding her shoulder with her right hand.

A finger tapped him on the shoulder. "Ume." He jumped in his skin and whirled around, but found only Wada staring at him in concern. "Hey, man, I got the new magazines. Let's go," Wada said in a quiet whisper and started walking back to the shooting range.

Tatsuya quickly followed after him. He didn't look back until he was safely at his station, and he took another look at the girl, Elena. She hadn't moved any further away and she was still holding onto her left shoulder. It must have hurt like hell.

"That's messed up," Wada said heavily.

Tatsuya's brown eyes flew from the auburn-haired woman to his friend. "What is?" he asked, thinking he knew what Wada was referring to.

Wada was examining the new magazines and reloading one of them into the pistol. " _That._ What we just witnessed back there. I don't know how she managed to find someone like him, but that girl's in major trouble. You saw his eyes too, didn't you?" Tatsuya nodded silently and Wada continued. "Maybe she does owe him money, but you don't get eyes like that just from being a sleazy loan shark. No, if I were to guess, I'd say he's a seasoned murderer. Maybe even a professional assassin."

"A what?" Tatsuya gasped. His mouth fell open in shock.

Wada gave him a deadpan look. "Why are you so surprised? You saw how quickly he moved to put her in place when she talked back to him and he was clearly enjoying seeing her in pain." He sighed again and shook his head. "No girl deserves to get mixed up with a guy like that, not even your former girlfriend, Hitomi."

Tatsuya couldn't talk to him about it anymore because that was the moment Wada decided to put on the ear protectors and eye shield and then undid the safety on the pistol, ready to continue shooting. Tatsuya turned back to his own station and fingered the new magazine cartridges absent-mindedly. His thoughts were entirely consumed by the auburn-haired young woman and the violent manhandling he'd just witnessed. Wada was right. It _was_ messed up. No woman- no person should ever be treated that way, so why had he just stood there and let it happen? Wada often accused him of being soft-hearted, but that didn't make him a pushover. On the contrary, he'd gotten himself into plenty of trouble in middle and high school for calling people out on their mistreatment of others. Once in high school, Wada had always been the one to bail him out when he got in over his head, but he had nobody to help him in middle school, yet, he'd done it anyway. What made this time different? This Saya person was just another bully mistreating a woman. Except that this bully was about 27 cm taller than him and could probably snap him and Wada in half with minimal effort and suffer no compunctions about doing so. Okay, so maybe he recognized that taking on Saya as he had done with others in the past was way beyond his or Wada's league, but it still didn't sit right with him. There must be _something_ he could do to get Elena out of that situation.

Unable to help himself, he looked back over his shoulder and was startled to see her walking into the shooting range. She was alone; Saya seemed to have wandered off to the gambling ring. Their eyes met for the briefest instant and he quickly averted his eyes, pretending to be checking that his pistol was assembled correctly. He heard her walk past him and Wada, and he chanced a glance at her retreating back. She stopped at an open station second from the far left and he watched her discretely from around Wada's tree-like figure. From what he could see at this distance, he could tell she knew what she was doing. That was not surprising if the conversation he'd overheard between her and Saya was any indication. This was apparently not her first time handling guns. He noticed she wasn't holding her shoulder anymore and was surprised that her left arm movements weren't stiff. Was she just that good at masking the amount of pain she was in? He seriously doubted it didn't hurt anymore.

Incensed beyond belief, Tatsuya left his booth and made his way outside the shooting range to the mini bar just to the right of the counter. "Excuse me, sir, but could I have a small bag of ice?" he asked of the bartender.

The bartender looked at him questioningly, but nodded. "Yeah, sure, just hold on a moment."

"Thank you, sir," Tatsuya said, and the bartender disappeared into the back. Tatsuya didn't have to wait long. The bartender came back shortly after with a small plastic bag full of ice and wrapped up in a red cloth.

"Here you go, sir. I won't charge you for the ice, but I expect you to return the cloth once you're done," said the bartender.

"Yes, sir. Thank you so much," Tatsuya said gratefully as he accepted the bag and walked back into the shooting range.

Part of him desperately wished that the back wall of the shooting range wasn't made of see-through glass. There was no escaping Saya seeing him approach Elena, for it would be foolish of him to think the man in black wouldn't be watching her closely, but his fear of the repercussions was less than his concern for the girl's well-being. He hesitated for a brief moment, just enough to gather his courage (or recklessness as Wada called it) and strode past his own booth and Wada's. He didn't stop until he was standing right outside hers.

"Um, excuse me…"

That was all he'd managed to say when she whipped around and fixed him with a piercing stare. "What do you want?" she snapped.

"I… I just wanted to give you this ice… for your shoulder, since…" he trailed off hesitantly.

She gave a derisive sniff and a smirk eerily similar to Saya's graced her lips. "Oh, yes, you had a front row seat to that little power display of Saya's, didn't you?"

"Ah, well, I… was that what it was?" he stammered meekly.

A mirthless laugh escaped her. "Quite so. Saya gets a huge kick out of ordering me around and forcing me to submit to him, but I'm used to it by now."

"It's not something you should _have_ to get used to," he said angrily and shoved the bag of ice into her hands. "Nobody should be hurt like that by another person."

At first, she stared at the red-wrapped bag of ice in her hands with wide-eyed wonder like she'd never seen such a thing before, but then turned her face up to him again. Her expression was guarded once more and he could discern nothing of her emotions. "Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm Ume Tatsuya," he answered at once. "And you are…?"

"Elena Shinran. And that's _Miss._ Shinran to you," she said sharply, echoing Saya's own words back to her from earlier. Did she even realize how much of his mannerisms she was emulating? He doubted it was done consciously.

"Yes, Miss. Shinran," Tatsuya agreed.

Her guarded expression gave way to outright suspicion. "Alright then, Mr. Tatsuya, what do you want?"

"Eh?"

"You don't know me. This is the first time we've even met, yet you're giving me ice for my injured shoulder, so what are you after?"

"Uh, nothing. I'm not after anything, I swear," Tatsuya said quickly, waving his arms hands in front of him.

"You have to be," Shinran insisted, taking a step forward. "You can't honestly expect me to believe you're giving me this ice simply out of the kindness of your heart!"

"Er, why not?" he asked.

She gaped at him dumbstruck. "W-Why not?" She repeated and shook her head vigorously, her suspicious expression returning in full force. "Because it just isn't done! Men don't do things for women without expecting something in return, so why are you giving me this?!"

Now it was Tatsuya's turn to gape at her. Did Shinran honestly believe that? Had she never been treated well by men in her entire life? Not all of her feelings could be attributed solely due to Saya's presence.

"Because it's the right thing to do," he said simply.

Slowly, the creases in her brow began to fade away and smooth out the longer she stared at him. Her greenish-blue eyes dropped to the bag of ice still in her hands and she pressed it against the top of her left shoulder joint. "Thank you," she muttered quietly. There was a pinkish tinge in her cheeks that had definitely not been there before. "But you're an odd man, Mr. Tatsuya."

Tatsuya rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "Uh, you're welcome. I'd like to think that being nice to other people is more normal than you apparently believe it is though."

Shinran shook her head twice. "Not in my world, at least not among men."

"And what about women?"

It was like somebody had flipped a switch. Her eyes suddenly shimmered like the morning sea and her smile was wide and full, a genuinely happy expression. She looked… cute! "My older sister," she said immediately. "Our parents died in a fire when I was little, so my sister ended up doing most of the work of raising me. Do you know, she was actually the one who taught me how to use a gun in case I was ever in a bad situation all alone and needed to defend myself." She patted the barrel of the gun proudly with her free left hand.

Tatsuya smiled slightly. "You really love your sister, don't you?"

Shinran nodded shyly. "She's the kindest, gentlest, most forgiving, and wonderful person I've ever known. There's not a star in the sky that shines brighter than her." Her warm expression vanished as suddenly as it appeared. "And I'll do whatever I have to to free us both from Saya's grasp."

"Earlier, he said something about his money saving your sister's life?" he asked tentatively.

She nodded again, just one sharp incline of her head. "Yes, she got into a bad car accident a while ago. The car was completely totaled, but she had to have multiple surgeries for bone repairs, organ transplants, blood transfusions, and skin grafts. It was too expensive for me to pay, even with my sister's money available to me, but I was getting desperate. She was my only family and I was terrified I would lose her and be left all alone. It was around that time that Saya found me. I don't know how he found out about my situation or why he sought me out. Maybe he knew I wouldn't be able to refuse him. I was scared. I knew that borrowing money from him would be dangerous, but the fear of losing my sister was more powerful than my common sense, so I accepted what he was offering. It's been eight months now. My sister has long since recovered from her various surgeries and I'm still paying back the original amount of money I borrowed from him, plus the interest."

"And you're paying him back with the money he makes gambling on your shooting ability," Tatsuya exclaimed in realization.

Shinran sighed heavily. "Yes. I've always been able to make my quota before, but now that it's been tripled…" Her left hand clenched tightly over her pistol's guard. He could see her shaking. "The S&W 5906 may have been what I was first taught to use, but I'm not _that_ much better with it compared to other pistols. I don't honestly see how I'll be able to make 150,000 yen today."

Her head was bent down, but she wasn't looking at anything in particular. He leaned sideways, trying to get a better view of her expression. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, staring blankly ahead and hitherto lost in her own personal world of horrors.

Maybe it was because he'd seen a glimpse of the thick, impenetrable walls around this young woman's heart that seeing her so deeply terrified caused his tongue to loosen, but Tatsuya had no idea what truly caused him to ask the question that fell unbidden from his lips, "Did he threaten you? If you don't make that 150,000 yen today?"

She glanced at him, then quickly averted her eyes. "Not… my life…" she admitted slowly.

Tatsuya understood without further clarification and it infuriated him. How dare that man- that _monster_ manipulate this young woman as if she was just some toy for him use and play with as he chose, break on a whim, and discard once it ceased to entertain him?! "Can I-?"

"-Even if you had that much on you, Saya would never accept it. I wouldn't have worked for it after all. Your money would only help if you took the opposing side of his bet and you lost," Shinran said with a bitter smile, guessing his thoughts before he'd even finished speaking. She removed the ice from her shoulder and handed the bag to him. "Now, please leave. It's been nice talking to you, but I have to warm up and get some practice shots in before he starts laying down the wagers."

Tatsuya took the ice and backed up, but didn't leave. He watched her put on the ear protectors and the eye shield. She loaded the weapon, turned off the safety, and took aim at the target. She fired once… twice… the entire 10-round clip… and his eyes grew wider with every shot. She got _really_ close to the bullseye a couple times, but overall, her shots were… well… there was no other word for it… erratic. He now understood why she was worried she wouldn't be able to make the 150,000 yen quota set for her today.

"I can help," he said before he could stop himself. "I can give you advice and help you improve your accuracy and precision."

Shinran turned around and lifted away one of the earphones. "Did you say something?"

"I can help you improve your accuracy or even your precision while shooting," he repeated. "If you'll let me, that is."

She raised one skeptical eyebrow at him, but then looked back at her target and sighed, "I suppose it can't hurt. I'm not going to make it like this anyway."

Tatsuya couldn't help the grin that spread across his face. "Great! Now first of all…" he began as he moved into the booth with her.

()()()()()

As Tatsuya had predicted, Gin was keeping a _very_ close eye on Sherry, though not for the reasons he believed. It was painfully obvious to Gin that the short man that had been watching Sherry as she entered the shooting range was interested in her. How could he not? She was beautiful, spirited, and the altercation they'd set up at the counter undoubtedly made him think she was some kind of tragic princess in need of rescuing from the vicious black dragon, a true damsel in distress. Gin was actually quite impressed with the way she'd decided to play the role; she'd done it in such a way that it was not too much of a stretch for her true personality.

It was almost predictable that the short man had left the shooting range a short while later after watching her to request some ice and give it to her for her supposed injury. Gin had smirked then. Sherry's acting had been spectacular. Of course, he hadn't _really_ hurt her and every move he had taken to seemingly increase the pressure on her shoulder had been all visual with no true force involved, but she had played it up brilliantly. Even _he_ might have believed she was being ruthlessly tortured if he had merely been a spectator. He had watched her self-appointed knight in shining armor approach her and give her the ice, or try to because it looked like she was giving him some trouble about accepting it. So, she was taking a distrustful angle, was she? She eventually accepted it because, of course, the knight has to be able to reach through to the princess, even a jaded one.

Her knight didn't immediately turn to leave, but… Sherry didn't make any move to turn him away either. Without warning, her whole countenance completely changed. It was bright and happy and way too fucking adorable. It was an expression that he used to see frequently whenever Sherry had talked about Akemi in the past, and was only sometimes directed at him. Gin frowned slightly and sat up a little straighter in his chair near the gambling ring. He strongly doubted she would be talking about him in such a favorable light in this situation, so why was she talking about Akemi? Was she creating the backstory of what he'd meant when he said his money was the reason her sister was still alive? She was clearly drawing this guy in and leading him on, but why? What was she up to?

He removed the cigarette from his mouth and held it between his fingers as he watched the pair. They were talking for a while now. He wished he could hear what they were saying, or at least hear what Sherry was saying, but he was too far away and he had a hunch that her knight might scurry away in fear if he approached them. Or maybe he wouldn't if it was to protect a beautiful woman? That would certainly be interesting.

'No matter. Whatever you're up to, I'll let you have your fun, Sherry. Just try not to blindside me too strongly, love," he thought fondly as he settled back in his chair and watched the crowd around him when she raised the gun for her 'practice round'.

There was no fun in watching her fake being a relatively poor marksman, but these naïve saps had never seen her before and had no idea what she was capable of. They were going to have to make some split-second evaluations of her ability based on an intentionally very poor shooting performance. Some of the people here were downright obvious about watching her while others were subtler, but it was all the same in the end. Sherry was fresh meat that they were ready to rip into, but then, he was ready to sink his teeth into them as well. While Sherry was to let these jackals grossly underestimate her skill, he too, would be letting them underestimate him. Since he'd brought her with him, it was only natural for him to bet on her as her sponsor, no matter how poorly she fared. He didn't care how much money he lost from this or even if he got it all back: gambling was much more fun when you had the deck stacked in your favor.

"Hey, you."

And so it began. Gin glanced in the direction the voice had come from. It belonged to a man of about Vodka's height and build, except even broader in the shoulders. The purple muscle shirt and black biker jacket he was wearing were already stretched due to the man's breadth, but even more so because of his large pects. His equally-large arms reminded him of a gorilla and they were crossed over his chest. He wore metal studded bracers on his wrists. His hair was dyed blond and spiked up into a mohawk with so much gel, it made his hair look like an oil slick. Gin couldn't tell if the guy had been aiming for a punk look or was just trying to be intimidating, but he was not impressed either way.

"You talking to me?" Gin asked silkily, peering out from behind his bangs at the blonde punk.

The punk's jaw clenched and his black eyes widened slightly, but Gin had to give him credit, he didn't show any other signs of fear. "I am."

"And who am I speaking to?"

The man narrowed his eyes. "A regular. Banju. And I've never seen you around here before."

His stilted speaking style reminded Gin of Korn and was just as verbose. The implicit question was obvious. "Kenzo Saya, from out of town. We're just stopping by."

Banju seemed satisfied with that answer and jerked his head over at Sherry. "You came in with that redheaded chick, right? What's her deal?"

Gin raised one mocking eyebrow. "Ohh? You want to know about little Miss. Elena Shinran, do you? Very well, I'll be sure to speak loudly enough that everyone present will be able to hear me. That way, I won't have to repeat myself at least ten more times, yes?"

Banju looked sulky at this and everyone else in the gambling ring was giving Gin their full attention now that they no longer had to pretend they weren't interested in what he would say. He smirked darkly and brought the cigarette back up to his mouth. "To summarize our relationship in simple terms, I am Elena's sponsor. She has no training with any type of rifle, but has used a large assortment of pistol models. Her preference is for the S&W 5906 that she's currently wielding today and she has a lot of raw potential to develop as a marksman. However, that being said, she's still young and relatively inexperienced, so she has a long way to go before she reaches my level."

"Is that right…?" Banju said with a curious glance over to Sherry's location.

Gin looked her way too and a scowl briefly crossed his features – that guy was standing way too close to her! – before it disappeared behind his mask and he forced himself to rein in his possessive feelings. There was no need to be jealous, he knew firsthand that Sherry was not an easy woman to win over. Still… what _was_ her end game with this guy? He stayed put just long enough to let her practice with a few extra rounds and let the competition size her up before he stood up.

"Alright, Elena, that's enough. We don't want you to use all your magazine clips on practice rounds, now do we?" he called out to her once she'd stopped firing and removed her head gear.

Mr. Knight jumped away from her like he'd been electrocuted and stared at him in horror. The sight pleased him immensely, especially given that this guy was flirting with his woman. Sherry, on the other hand, turned to face him slow and deliberate. Her expression could be best described as stony, but he could read in her eyes what these strangers who didn't know her could not: the fire and excitement of a challenge.

"Then I guess I'm ready," she said in a perfect affectation of casual indifference.

Gin smirked. "Then let's get started."

()()()()()

Sherry was glad that she had decided to talk to Tatsuya and let him 'offer advice' on how to improve her marksmanship. Someone who was a bad shot was either completely ignorant or incredibly skilled. Pretending to be semi-competent and acting on another person's advice to do better was a fun challenge. She couldn't wait until the end though, and she had an idea of how she wanted to finish off her time at the shooting range today. Round after round she shot the pistol and Gin won or lost based on the nature of the bet he'd taken and her performance. She had no idea how he was doing on his end; she was just shooting and the only thing she was focusing on was not falling into a pattern. Sometimes, he called out specific goals for her to aim towards, but otherwise, she was just aiming and shooting wherever she pleased, relishing in the knowledge that even after all this time, she could still hit exactly what she was aiming at. She had just finished another magazine clip and was about to reload a new one when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She whipped her head around, but found it was only Tatsuya standing there.

Somewhat disappointed, Sherry removed the ear protectors and set them down on the shelf where the remaining magazines were stored. "What is it?" she asked.

"I wanted to see how you were doing on ammunition," he said tentatively.

"I've got plenty," she reassured him. "And if I end up needing more, Saya will buy them. I probably won't be allowed to leave until I either make my quota or the range closes."

Tatsuya's mouth set into a hard line and he frowned at the ground as soon as she said that. "I'll make sure that doesn't happen," he muttered quietly and left her booth without a word of explanation.

Puzzled, but not too fussed, she unloaded the empty magazine container from the pistol and picked up a new one from the shelf to reload the handgun with a fresh clip. That guy liked her way too much for having only just met her, but she supposed she was to blame for that. She had instantly pinpointed him as one of those 'shining knight' kind of guys as soon as he'd approached her and she'd purposefully fed him those lies to activate those protective instincts of his. Her own behavior confused her slightly though. She was tired of lying as Ai Haibara and yet, here she was, shamelessly making up stories to some naïve sap for the sake of her own amusement. She really was an awful person. What a pair she and Gin made. She suddenly heard his laugh and nearly fumbled the gun in shock. What?! Gin rarely laughed! Surely, she must be mistaken! She walked out of the booth and peered through the glass that made up the backdrop of the shooting range. There he was, standing near the gambling ring and bent forward, laughing his heart out. With a start, she noticed Tatsuya was also standing right in front of him looking quite serious. Wonderful. What had he said to Gin to make him laugh like that?

Gin calmed down of his own accord and regained his impressive stature, but his eyes were still dancing with mirth. "It's impossible. Whatever pretty little words Elena might have said or however infatuated you are with her, _she_ knows that she can't hit the bullseye seven times in a row. Even _you_ must see that she doesn't have the skill for it, and yet you're betting 10,000 yen on such an outcome? You must be joking because I doubt you're _that_ stupid."

"I'm dead serious," Tatsuya said firmly. "I bet 10,000 yen that she will hit the bullseye seven consecutive times."

Gin's head tilted back slightly and his eyes fixed on Tatsuya with haughty amusement. "Hmm… but perhaps you _are_ that foolish…" he said quietly. "Very well, if you're so determined, then I'll accept your wager and I'll take great pleasure in watching her fail to meet your esteemed expectations."

Sherry tried not to be too irritated with Gin for saying it was impossible for her to shoot that well. He knew darn well she could, but he had a role to play. Still, it gave her an idea… She knew exactly why Tatsuya had placed such a high wager on such a supposedly-impossible task. He was trying to lose in order to help meet the fake quota, just as she'd suggested before she'd begun her practice rounds. She replaced the protective gear for her eyes and ears and aimed at the target with the new rounds in her gun. Knowing the details of that particular wager didn't alter her performance in the slightest and she continued to keep half an ear open for when Gin called time. It couldn't be much longer now.

After a while when she was reloading her gun again, she heard a muffled knocking on the glass behind her. She turned around to see the source. It was Gin, casually leaning against the glass and looking pleased. She lowered the ear protector headset to rest on her shoulders so that she could hear him.

"You've met your quota. Looks like you did much better than usual today. I wonder… was it because I allowed you the S&W 5906 or was it due to the friendly advice you received from your latest admirer?"

This was it. Now was the moment she had been waiting for. She squared her shoulders and faced him head-on with a stern look. Gin raised an eyebrow at her, a silent question. She deliberately looked away to a distant spot to his left. "Hey, you sir in the cash office at the ticket counter, what are the odds on my being able to perfectly match every shot in a full magazine clip for a Beretta M1934?" she yelled.

The entire building fell quiet, punctuated by soft whispers and murmurs all around. Sherry could feel Gin staring at her intently. At last, the cash office manager gave her an answer, "The odds are 1 in 1000 at best."

"Understood. I'll take those odds and challenge Mr. Kenzo Saya here," she declared, pointing dramatically at Gin. "I bet 10,000 yen that for an entire 7-round magazine of your Beretta M1934, I will perfectly match every shot of yours that hits the target."

The room exploded into a buzz of excitement, but she continued on, speaking louder to be heard. "And if I win, Mr. Saya, then I will have won 10,000,000 yen. I will repay the original amount I borrowed from you, plus the accumulated interest and the 10,000 I'm using to make this bet, and when I do, I will be forever free of you."

Gin's eyes widened slightly and his jaw slackened, his mouth hanging open a little. Then his expression cleared and a deep chuckle escaped him. "How audacious of you… using money that you don't even have to make this bet in order to escape me, but… if you insist on this foolish venture, then I'll accept your bet." A cruel grin contorted his features and he continued on, "However, if you _lose_ , then I will never let you see your sister again and you will belong to me for the rest of your life. I will be kind enough to absolve you of the remaining debt that you still owe though, so it won't be a _total_ loss. Do you still wish to walk this path, Elena?"

She wished he wouldn't look at her like that, like he was a predator about to feast on her flesh. Now was not the time for her to be admiring how sexy her lover looked when she was supposed to be afraid of him. She inclined her head once in response to his question. "I do."

The grin remained and from within the black briefcase, he withdrew 10,000 yen and held it up before her eyes. "I'll be right with you in a moment," he purred and turned on his heel to walk back to the ticket counter and place the bet on her behalf.

With Gin's back to them, Tatsuya returned to her side looking both impressed and concerned. "I can't believe you just did that," he said shakily.

Sherry ducked her head, affecting a bashful demeanor and idly twirled a strand of hair about her fingers. "I can hardly believe it myself, but… you inspired me, you know. When Saya came over here and started taunting me about whether I'd done so much better today because of the type of gun or because of you, I just thought 'How would Tatsuya respond?' and I just… challenged him on the spot as my first instinct," she said shyly.

A light blush colored Tatsuya's cheeks and he stared at her in amazement. Ooh, she may have overdone it that time. "Did you really?" he asked.

"More or less…" she said vaguely. Emphasis on _less_. "Saya's coming back now. You should go. Don't worry, I'll be alright."

She could tell he didn't quite believe her, but he thankfully left at her request anyway. Gin had just entered the shooting range and was casually making his way over to her. She moved out of the booth so that Gin would have plenty of room. No words or any other type of communication passed between them as they moved except for one shared, meaningful look. And then Gin was too far ahead for their eyes to meet. He withdrew his Beretta from the shoulder holster under his coat and aimed it at the target at the end of the range. He fired, shifted his aim by the smallest of margins, and fired again seven total times in rapid succession. A deathly silence had fallen over the building long after the final bang stopped echoing, and Sherry understood why. On the target, the yellow bullseye had six new holes equally-spaced out along the edge with a seventh through the perfect center of the target. Even she was impressed, and she _knew_ how good Gin was.

Gin popped out the empty magazine and reloaded the Beretta with his own ammunition hidden in one of his many pockets. Once it was loaded and the safety back in place, he slid the handgun back underneath his coat and turned to face her with a smug smirk on his face. "You think you can match that?" he asked condescendingly.

"I know I can," she replied, just as haughtily.

"We'll see now, won't we?" he murmured and left the booth to allow her in for her turn.

Sherry took up her position and checked over her gun once more before raising it at the target. This was the moment she had been waiting for all day. She carefully set her sights on the very center bullet and held the weapon steady, remembering everything Gin had ever taught her about marksmanship. She released a slow exhale of breath and squeezed the trigger.

 _Bang!_

No new marks appeared on the target and the existing holes didn't change in size either. A faint smirk crossed her lips. The normal assumption in such circumstances would be that she missed the target entirely and Sherry was certain that many in the audience were thinking that. She adjusted her aim for the bullet just above the center and fired again. Again, no new bullet holes. She repeated the process for the remaining five bullets until she had finished. She took a small step back and admired her handiwork with no small amount of pride. The target looked no different from how Gin had left it and she turned around to face the stunned crowd behind her.

"If anyone wishes to verify the accuracy of my shots with those of Mr. Kenzo Saya, now is your chance to do so," she called.

One of the staff called an official stop to any further shooting – he needn't have bothered, everyone had been too busy watching her – and entered into the shooting field with a tiny tape measure, tweezers, and a magnet. He knelt down in front of her target and though his back was to her, she imagined he must be measuring the radii differences and checking to see whether there were even two bullets present in each hole. Eventually, he stood up and turned around.

Sherry knew what he was about to say the instant she saw his expression and it was no surprise at all when the staff member said, "The centers of all seven bullets from the S&W 5906 perfectly match up with the centers of those from the Beretta M1934."

Sherry tilted her chin up into the air and met Gin's gaze unflinchingly. "I win," she said.

It was a good thing nobody but her could see Gin's face. There was no mistaking the proud shine in those green eyes as he wordlessly presented her with the ticket to collect her winnings. The entire facility burst into noise. Some people were exclaiming over the shots in outrage, others in amazement or disbelief, and some people were collecting on their bets. She should be doing that too. She put the safety lock back on and left the booth, leaving Gin behind. Sherry passed Tatsuya and his friend, who were both staring at her dumbstruck and she smiled to herself. _This._ This was what she had been after the whole time, to see the stupefied expressions on everyone's faces when they realized she outclassed them after having grossly underestimated her abilities. The money from the gambling was just a nice bonus. She made her way through the throng and approached the ticket counter, giving the ticket to the cash officer and wondering if they had enough to pay her.

It turned out they did and they gave it to her in a thick manila envelope. Not really the safest way to handle that much cash, but it would be in Gin's bullet-proof briefcase soon anyway. With the money now in hand, she turned back around to relocate Gin and found him just outside the shooting range along the back edge.

She came up to him and thrust the envelope into his chest. "There. You have no hold over me any longer," she said in a determined voice and spotted Tatsuya standing only a short distance away off to her right, watching her. A sly smirk slid across her face. Perhaps it was time to end this charade. With reckless abandon, she reached out and grabbed a hold of the front of Gin's turtleneck, bringing him down to her level with their noses only an inch apart. "Now you're mine," she said and kissed him fiercely.

It was as if a dam had broken. The tension that had been building back up between them since they left the car surged forward with a vengeance, and they clung to each other like twining vines. It was with great difficulty that Sherry at last pulled herself away from Gin's embrace and turned to face Tatsuya with a haughty smile playing her lips. His jaw was slack and his eyes spoke of incomprehensible contradictions. 'What was going on and why was she kissing him?' was what she imagined he must be thinking. She pressed herself firmly against Gin's side and wrapped one arm around his waist while his own arm came around her shoulders in return.

She cocked her head sideways, still smiling. "Thank you for your monetary contribution, Mr. Tatsuya. You've proven to be very entertaining."

"W-What are you talking about?" he stuttered.

Her smile deepened into something slightly more sinister. Sherry slipped out from under Gin's arm and swayed her hips as she approached the stunned Tatsuya, stopping only when she was half a meter away from him. "It was all an act, of course, from the very moment my fiancé and I walked through that door," she said silkily.

Tatsuya's mouth opened and closed and although no sound came out, she could make out the words 'act' and 'fiancé'.

"Oh yes," she continued on in airy manner. "You see, we both knew that we wouldn't make as much money if everyone knew how skilled we really are. Kenzo naturally looks like a man who would be proficient with a gun, but not me. However, we both knew that if anyone here suspected our true relationship, then they might guess I knew more and was just faking my poor marksmanship. Besides, the real reason why we came here was because I wanted to see all of your stupefied faces when I shot seven perfect marks in a row."

"You mean… you were lying to me the whole time?!" he exclaimed.

Sherry shrugged. "Naturally. Oh, but playing with you was an unexpected treat. I've never had the chance to play the role of a femme fatale before, and you fell for the act perfectly hook, line, and sinker. It was not part of the original plan we concocted, but fortunately, my Kenzo is adaptable and has plenty of faith in me. It was truly a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Tatsuya."

A familiar hand closed around her shoulder once more and she let Gin lead her out of the building back out into the parking lot and blinding sunlight. Once they were by the Porsche, Gin set the briefcase down on the black asphalt, then caught her under the arms and picked her up, spinning her around in the air.

"Sherry, you devilish, delightful woman!" he crowed. Her feet had barely touched the ground again when he pulled her flush against his chest and returned her passionate kiss from earlier.

She moaned into his mouth, feeling elated, but reluctantly pulled herself away from the lip lock once more. "Don't think you can get away with trying to seduce me right now," she warned with a stern frown and a sharp prod to his chest. "I need lunch and then a race first. And maybe dinner if I can wait that long."

Gin looked slightly disappointed when he sighed, but said, "Understood. We can look at the map and discuss the race location while we have lunch, and afterwards, we can go pick up your bike."

"Where exactly did you store it, anyway?" Sherry asked curiously as she stooped down to retrieve the briefcase and handed it to Gin. She was not aware of him owning any property in the area nor of any MiB-sanctioned locations nearby.

"Chianti actually owns a mountain villa not too far from here. She, Korn, and Calvados all used to visit it together when Calvados was still alive. Now it's just her and Korn who use it," Gin said. He opened the front door of his car and slid the briefcase back under the front seat. "When I asked her if I could temporarily store your motorcycle and gear at her villa for the long weekend, she wasted no time in throwing the spare key at me along the words 'Tell Sherry to have fun for me'. Chianti sends her regards by the way."

"How sweet. Please thank her for me when you return the keys," she said with a slight smile.

She walked around to the passenger's side and slid into the car with a gasp. The inside was hot and stifling inside, and she could already feel sweat breaking out across her forehead. She reached for the window crank and rolled it down as far as it would go. A fresh breeze blew in through the now open window and she sighed happily. It was still hot in the car, but the cool wind did wonders to make it less so.

"So how was it, Sherry? Did you get what you were hoping to here?" Gin cranked his own window down before turning the key in the ignition.

Sherry propped her elbow up on the door frame and rested her chin upon her open palm as she gazed out the window. "I did, thank you. I was able to prove to myself that I haven't lost my shooting accuracy. I was able to prove to others that I'm not a force to be underestimated with just because I'm a young woman. And lastly, I was able to toy around with a man's heart like the femme fatales in those old American _film noir_ style detective movies you love so much. You made the comment once that I had the right personality to pull it off, remember? I wanted to try it out at least once."

"I can't believe you still remember that; it was a long time ago," Gin snickered.

She nodded in acknowledgment. "Yeah, I was fourteen and Akai was still in the Organization back then. He hadn't been granted his codename yet at that point, had he?"

"No, he wasn't given the name 'Rye' until near the end of his time with us. It's a pity he proved he couldn't be trusted. He would have been an excellent asset with his intellect and sniping skills."

"But what went wrong?" she asked, turning away from the window to look at him. He was already smoking again. "You've inducted plenty of other secret agents before into the secret that is the Men in Black, so why did it fail with Akai that time?"

Gin exhaled heavily. "Bad timing, unfortunately. Do you remember the Fujiin serial sniper murder case two years ago?"

Sherry frowned in thought. "Maybe… was that the one where a Labroidean disguised as a human started calling himself the Wind God and sniping off high-profile figures from within tall buildings in major cities, killing six people by the time he was stopped?"

"That's the one. Shuichi Akai wasn't codenamed back then, so he was unaware of the alien aspects of the story, but he played the pivotal role in stopping the Labroidean from killing any more innocent victims. It was because of his quick thinking and exceptional skill with a sniper rifle that he was finally granted his codename. It should have been only two days later at most that I would then meet with him and reveal the truth about the Organization as the Men in Black. No NOC that's reached codename rank to this date has ever had a trap prepared for me in that short amount of time, and I bet that Akai wouldn't have either, if the meeting had happened when it was supposed to…"

She took in the sight of his taut expression, his narrowed eyes, and stiff shoulders. Even though two years had passed, the events that had occurred back then still bothered him. "What happened?" she asked slowly. "Akemi may have known more than she let on, but I was kept mostly in the dark about the whole thing. All I knew was that Akai had become Rye and then not long after, he was banished from the Organization after failing your loyalty test by summoning the rest of the FBI to try and trap you."

Gin smiled that same fond, distant expression that overcame him every time he started thinking of Akemi. "Ah, your sister was always very perceptive, but with her being so close to Akai, I couldn't have kept it a secret from her even if I tried. Knowing that, we both agreed that for your sake, it was best you not know what Akai was involved in until the investigation had been completed. By that time though, it was too late and Akai had already forced our hand to remove him from the Organization. I suppose there's no point keeping it secret any longer though."

"What did Akai do?" Sherry pressed, leaning towards him in her seat, both equal parts eager and nervous to hear the tale.

"It was only the first evening after he'd been codenamed that I had ordered him to meet me so that I could fill him in about the true nature of the Organization. I didn't want to risk him informing his superiors of his promotion before I got to him, so the sooner I got it done, the better. Knowing how he was and how unbelievable the existence of aliens is, I had prepared a counter-argument with accompanying evidence for everything he could throw at me that might prove I was lying. But he never showed up. I waited the whole night, but he never came. The following morning, I got a call from my sister that Scotch had been killed that night and Rye was the prime murder suspect."

Sherry gasped and drew back, her hand flying to her mouth in shock. "Murder… Rye?" she stammered in disbelief.

Gin gave a solemn nod. "I thought the same when she told me that. While I didn't get along well with Akai for a number of reasons, he was not a murderer. He would always try to find ways of completing assignments with the smallest number of casualties possible – 0 if he thought he could get away with it. The idea of him murdering a fellow codenamed agent out of the blue like that just didn't sit right with me. However, Bourbon had arrived at Rye's and Scotch's location mere moments after Scotch died. He found Scotch slumped against the ground with a bullet through his phone in his breast pocket and Rye standing before him, sprayed with Scotch's blood and holding a still-smoking gun in his left hand. According to Bourbon, the first words out of Rye's mouth when he appeared were 'Traitors shall be punished'."

She couldn't deny that the case sounded fairly open-and-shut, but there had to be more to it than that. Gin had mentioned an investigation had taken place. "What more did you guys discover?"

He huffed in irritation which was accompanied by a puff of cigarette smoke. "A mess, and one that may have been avoided entirely if Akai had shown up for my meeting like he was supposed to. The investigation had to be conducted in secret without Akai's knowledge because there wasn't supposed to be anything suspicious about a loyal member of a secret crime syndicate killing a spy. The gun was in Rye's possession, but the lack of blood splatter on Scotch's right thumb suggests he may have been the one to pull the trigger and committed suicide. While more plausible than the theory that Rye killed him, it still doesn't make sense and Bourbon's still convinced that Akai killed Scotch."

Sherry frowned and cocked her head to the side. "You mean Bourbon didn't solve the case? That doesn't sound like how Akemi always described him to me."

"No, he didn't solve it. In fact, the case has remained unsolved these past two years. There were many suspicious points, such as Akai failing to meet me at the scheduled time and had instead pursued another codenamed member who happened to be a NOC like him. The other was the contradictory evidence. Akai's words to Bourbon intimate that he killed him, but he also didn't know the truth of the Organization, so may have just said that to protect himself. However, Scotch committing suicide with Akai's gun doesn't fit with Scotch's character assessment by Bourbon's testament. The autopsy found some kind of odd drug in Scotch's system, but it was at such low levels that they couldn't identify it, so the clinicians didn't think it had any relevance. With no new leads, the case went cold and the internal investigation was dropped."

"And it was after that when you rescheduled the meeting with Akai?" Sherry asked.

"Yes, but by that point, Akai had been Rye for nearly a month and still didn't know about the Men in Black. There was no doubt in my mind that he'd already informed his superiors about his new status and had everything arranged to take advantage of it at a moment's notice. The odds of success were against me, but I still had to take a chance on him." He removed the spent cigarette and extinguished the remaining embers in the ashtray. "You already know what happened next."

"You arranged for a meeting with Akai at the shipping yard, but sent an old man in your place to scout out the situation. He came back and informed you that Akai was there, but a foreigner, probably another FBI agent, came out of hiding and warned him away because it was too dangerous," she recalled from memory. "It was that same night that Akai was outed as a member of the FBI unsuitable to use as a liaison and you had Akemi and I moved to prevent Akai from being able to ambush us at home."

"That about sums it up. I haven't had to deal with him for two years and now he's suddenly back with a vengeance," Gin groaned.

"Do you think he found out about Akemi?"

"Vermouth seems to think so and I don't feel inclined to disagree with her on that score. Working around Shuichi Akai's meddling will definitely be problematic. Ah, here we are. Will this be suitable?"

Sherry looked out the window past Gin and saw him pointing out a family restaurant on the left side of the street. "Yeah, that looks good, but can we park in the shade this time?"

Gin chuckled. "I will if I can." And with that, he turned into the restaurant's parking lot and Sherry started rolling her window back up when a thought suddenly came to her.

"Hey, Gin, this might seem a bit out there, but do you suppose there could be a connection between Scotch's unconfirmed suicide and Calvados's suicide, or do you think the two incidents are unrelated?"

He was busy parking, so he didn't look at her, but his brow furrowed. "Off-hand, I would say they're separate events. The only thing they have in common is that both agents committed suicide and they have living, very close friends that are so convinced they would never do such a thing that they believe it's more likely they were killed by the only other agent present. I can definitely see why you'd wonder if there was a connection between them. However… two suicides by codenamed agents in three years… That _is_ unusual…" He stopped the car in the parking space and turned to her, giving her a brief smile. "Thank you, Sherry. You've given me something more to think about."

"Glad to be of assistance," she said with a wry laugh, but felt herself glow with pleasure. She'd said something that Gin thought might be worth investigating.

* * *

 _The Harley mentioned in this chapter is a callback to when Haibara mentions owning one in the Lupin III vs Detective Conan: The Movie. I don't have particularly strong feelings about that movie either way (except for being extremely skeptical about how the hell Fujiko found out Haibara's codename was Sherry or the name of the drug she was working on, even if she did somehow manage to learn she was once a part of the Organization).  
_


	9. Three Days with Heiji Hattori: Part 2

**Author's Note: I swear to god, this story is the most disobedient, unruly child I have ever written. I'd only intended for two filler chapters before beginning the "Clash of Red and Black" set, but once again, this story didn't want to listen to me and I ended up writing so much that I had to break it up into three parts instead of two.**

 **Also, Gin absolutely refused to let the POV of this chapter shift to any other character surprisingly. I couldn't do anything about it. To compensate, I'm pretty sure Sherry's POV owns most of the next chapter.**

* * *

Three Days with Heiji Hattori: Part 2

"Is _that_ it?" Sherry gaped in astonishment. Her face was plastered against the window staring up in awe at the beautiful, Swiss-inspired, rustic-style villa at the top of the mountain they were driving up.

"Yeah, that's Chianti's place," Gin said with a slight smirk. "Just wait until you see the inside though. The outside's nothing by comparison."

"If it was covered with snow in the dead of winter, it would look like something straight out of a Christmas card," she commented idly, not taking her eyes off the wooden villa as the car climbed the last incline and rolled to a stop just before the front porch.

The both of them got out of the vintage vehicle as soon as the engine was turned off and Sherry fell in step behind him as he ascended the steps to the front door, the villa's key already in-hand. He turned the key in the door and heard the distinctive click of the lock opening.

"Alright, we're in," he said. He opened the door and walked inside. "Vodka and I left your motorbike and gear in the garage. You can get there through the door at the end of the hallway just around the corner to your left."

Sherry brushed past him and started walking in that direction when she paused with an appreciative whistle. Gin understood why once he caught up with her. Before turning left, the living room was just before them. The furniture setup and layout was an unusual amalgamation of traditional Japanese décor and Western abstract figures. Everything in the room with an obvious Japanese touch seemed to be either dark green, tan, or white, while everything else in the room was either dark brown or bright orange. The sharp contrast between the styles and colors shouldn't have worked, and yet they managed somehow, creating a room that spoke vividly of the natures of the two people who visited this villa most.

"I had no idea Chianti had such a sense of style," Sherry murmured, impressed.

"Actually, it wasn't Chianti who designed this, but Korn," Gin corrected her.

Her short reddish-brown hair whipped her face, she snapped her head around so fast. "Korn did this?" she said in surprise.

"Naturally," he said with an amused shrug. "It was a long time ago, but Korn graduated from his university with a degree in interior design. You don't honestly expect _Chianti_ would have the patience for this kind of deliberate artistic endeavor, do you?"

"No, I guess not," Sherry admitted. She took in the view of the living room for a moment more before retreating down the hall to the garage door. She left through the door and came back less than a minute later with a small duffle bag over her shoulder. "Where's Chianti's room?" she asked.

Gin jerked his head in the opposite direction of the garage. "All the bedrooms are that way. I don't think any of the doors are locked."

She nodded in thanks. "I shouldn't be too long," she promised and walked past him once more to the opposite end of the villa. Sherry tried a door and when it opened at her touch, she peered inside and then glanced back at him with an amused smile. "Definitely Chianti's room," she said and closed the door behind her.

Alone with nothing but his thoughts for company, a slight frown creased Gin's forehead and from his coat pocket, he withdrew his handkerchief. He carefully unfolded it until the pinkish-white stain he had noticed on it back at the restaurant was revealed to his eyes. He knew it had not been there earlier that morning and the only other time he had used it was when he had wiped the sweat off Sherry's face right after she'd transformed back into an adult. He touched the stain with his finger and rubbed it slightly. It was smooth, but slightly sticky. He pulled his finger away and noticed the color was now present on his skin, faint as it was. He managed to wipe it back off on his handkerchief with difficulty since the substance did not want to come off. Eyes narrowing in suspicion, he brought the stain close to his nose and sniffed. His eyes widened slightly and he drew back. He knew that smell, but why was…?

"I'm all dressed now. Sorry, if I took a while," Sherry's voice suddenly interrupted his thoughts.

He glanced up from his handkerchief and all thoughts of the odd stain fled his mind in an instant. He'd literally forgotten just how good she looked in her motorcycle riding outfit. Sherry was wearing a tight, form-fitting black body suit that showed off and accentuated every single one of her delicious curves and she was resting her helmet on her right hip. It was sinfully hot. And if that wasn't enough, the suit also had a large, scarlet red 'V' that began at the center of her waistline and split up to her shoulders, each of the two solid red lines paving a track across her breasts. Fuck. To hell with the race, he wanted to peel that suit off her supple body right now and fuck her against the wall so hard that Chianti would raise hell at them later for leaving an impression in her wall.

As if she could read his mind, Sherry said firmly, "You can save those perverted thoughts of yours for _after_ we've finished." Only her red-flushed cheeks gave away how much she was turned on by his shameless perusal of her figure. Well, he could wait a little longer for the evening. There was something _else_ that had captured his interest in the mean time.

"Sherry, are you wearing makeup today?"

The blush died down and she looked at him sharply. "Why do you ask?"

He quirked an eyebrow at her. She was oddly defensive for such an innocent query. For an answer, he held up the handkerchief still in his hand and showed her the pinkish-white stain. "This got here when I was cleaning the sweat off your face earlier," he explained.

"Ah, I see," she said. For some reason, she looked relieved. "Yes, I am, but only a bit of foundation and blush. I didn't want the makeup to be gaudy or obvious. I'm glad I succeeded there."

"Ohh?" he hummed, watching her expressions. She didn't appear to be any more forthcoming, so he let the subject drop and stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. "Anyway, it's a little after 3:30 right now, so we should review the ground rules of this little race of yours before we head out. I don't want to deal with any hospitals because of this."

"Yes, yes, the planned race time is approximately an hour and the primary rule is that on the two-lane roads, neither of us are allowed to occupy the other lane unless we're passing, and even then, neither of us can pass unless we have a good line of sight in order to avoid crashing into other vehicles. The only other rule is that if one of us is caught by the police, then the other isn't allowed to take advantage of it and pull ahead. Although…" Sherry smirked and came up beside him. One of her fingers trailed up his chest and traced the outline of his shoulder. "I don't think I have to worry about _you_ leaving me behind, darling. You can just barely keep your hands off me as it is."

"You're in the mood for some interesting games today, love," he commented, his eyes never leaving her greenish-blue ones.

She giggled mischievously. "What can I say? I'm feeling rebellious. I've been too well-behaved as Ai Haibara." Like a light switch, she changed tone and direction in an instant, thrusting the duffle bag into his arms and walking straight past him. "Well, I'm getting my bike out of the garage. We're not getting any younger just standing around and my time is finite."

A little dazed by the sudden turnaround in behavior, Gin watched her put on the black helmet and walk back to the other end of the house back into the garage. He left her to it and left through the front door, locking it behind him, and descended down the front steps to his own vehicle. He had just reached it when the garage thundered to life and the door slowly retreated backwards along the ceiling. Sherry rolled the motorcycle out and then walked over to the side where a covered panel resided on the wall.

She flipped it open, but then paused, staring at it blankly for a moment before looking over her shoulder at him. "Gin, what's the passcode for the door?"

He tilted his head to the side with a playful smirk. "What makes you think _I_ know it?"

The visor hid her face, but he could still perfectly imagine the deadpan glare she was giving him, especially with her hands on her hips like that. "You couldn't have gotten my bike into the garage without it."

He shrugged in defeat. "Fine, the passcode is 91735*."

"Does Chianti have something against even numbers?" Sherry joked as she punched in the passcode. The garage groaned its way closed.

Gin tossed the duffle bag into the back seat where Sherry's other bag was also located and slid inside while Sherry swung her leg over her motorbike and centered herself. The Porsche rumbled when he turned the key in the ignition and Sherry's Harley roared in response. Since she didn't have to turn around first, she was able to start down the mountain road ahead of him. He wasn't too worried though; their race wouldn't start until after they had _both_ reached the end of the road leading up to the villa.

One three-point-turn later, Gin was finally in a good position to drive down the road after Sherry. He took a quick moment on one of the straights to glance at the sun's position in the sky before returning his eyes back to the road. It was still high and bright with only white cumulus clouds in view, but the sun had already crested the peak into the western sky. It would only descend further from there, but they wouldn't have to worry about driving around in the dark. Gin had made sure of that when he and Sherry were planning out the route at lunch. Upon approaching the end of the drive, he saw Sherry already there waiting for him, the engine idling loudly, and he pulled up along her right side in a rolling stop.

"You sure took your time getting down here," she commented.

"Old cars were made of stronger metals, but it also makes them heavier than newer cars. I'm sure you would prefer that I not spin out going downhill, yes?"

"I suppose your car being damaged would be an unnecessary distraction and I _do_ prefer you in one piece," Sherry taunted.

Amused, Gin pulled out one of his matches and held it aloft outside the window for Sherry's inspection. "I'm going to throw this and when it hits the ground, that's when the race begins."

Sherry gave a nod of acceptance. "Just don't throw it so far that we can't see it."

"Who do you take me for?" he teased and threw the slim bit of wood ahead of them.

They watched, as if in slow motion, the match tumble end over end through the air until at last, the head touched the dark asphalt of the paved road. Tires squealed and rubber burned and Sherry shot ahead first, the motorcycle being lighter and smaller than the car, but Gin was not one to be left behind in the dust for long.

The nearly hour-long race that followed along the winding mountain roads was fast and grueling, the two participants constantly alternating who was in the lead. One could hardly say they were going easy on the other and yet, it was less of a competitive race and more of a flirtatious chase, like the aerial courtship of birds. Though not willing to give up the lead position to the other, neither sped up too far away when they had the opportunity to, even when it would have been to their advantage. In this way, they led each other around the mountainous countryside until at last they found themselves approaching the hotel that Gin had insisted upon using as their end point. With the end in sight, their former playful manner diminished entirely.

The hotel was on the left side of the road with Gin in the lead and only a short two hundred meters before the turn into the parking lot. There was no one coming from the opposite direction on this straight road, but Sherry wouldn't have enough time to pull out to the side and cut in front of him to make the turn, especially not being on the outside edge. He smirked. This win was his. At the last second, he slammed hard on the brake and spun the wheel sharply. The tires screeched in protest, but he still didn't lose control. He distantly acknowledged the revving challenge of the motorcycle behind him, but just as he was halfway through the turn, the Harley's roaring engine grew suddenly louder and his heart nearly stopped dead as he witnessed Sherry's black-suited figure come up along the small inside margin that had opened up between him and the road with the fast turn. The left turn across the finish line was completed by the both of them in one synchronized movement and Sherry shot forward past him once she'd straightened out.

Gin's Porsche fish-tailed slightly before he managed to regain a straight line. Numb shock was coursing through him like glacial runoff despite his heart still racing in furious panic and that cool detachment from his body was what he desperately held onto to park the car and shut off the engine. He sat there for a moment, leaning against the seat and stared blankly ahead, breathing heavily. He could hear his blood pounding in his ears and he glanced almost automatically over at Sherry sitting on her Harley nearby. Her comportment was calm and relaxed and she seemed completely unfazed by what she had just done. That, more than anything, snapped him out of his shock, and hot anger replaced the numbness in an instant.

With his heart still beating a hundred kilometers a minute, Gin threw his seatbelt off and got out of his car. "Sherry, what the _hell_ was that?!" he shouted.

The auburn-haired woman removed her helmet and shook her head before glancing back at him. "You were turning, I saw an opening, and I slipped by you," she said calmly.

"You made a very sharp and risky swerve on the inside edge of that turn," he retorted, slamming the door shut and stalking over to her, towering over her more than usual while she was still sitting on her motorcycle. "If you had misjudged that turn or your tires lost traction, you'd have slipped right under my car and been very badly injured as a _best-case_ scenario."

She set the helmet on the cross-section of the handlebars. "Yet nothing happened, now did it? Like I said, I saw the opening and the room to pull it off, and I did so. And that means…" She slipped her right leg over the bike so that her whole body now faced him and a small smirk graced her lips. "I win."

Gin spluttered, "What? No. Even with that dangerous stunt you pulled, your front wheel _still_ wasn't ahead of the front fender of my car."

Sherry huffed indignantly and crossed her arms. "That's like saying a horse won a race against a human because it's nose stuck across the finish line first. Motorcycles don't even have fenders, so to use that as the standard is ridiculous. However, both vehicles have wheels and my front wheel _was_ ahead of yours when I pulled into this hotel parking lot."

"And of course, you're certain that was the case, you being the official, unbiased referee and all," Gin mocked, leaning forward into her personal space, his hands coming to rest on the motorcycle on either side of her. "As our referee, I would like for you to review the legality of that dangerous and _stupid_ move you pulled in relation to the pre-established rules, or do you not remember that the first one was no passing in the same lane? That inside swerve was within one lane, so you should be disqualified and your supposed win therefore nullified."

Sherry arched an eyebrow at him. "Cute. By that reasoning, you get to win by default." She uncrossed her arms and one hand grabbed a hold of his belt. She pulled and he moved forward into her, his thighs brushing along the inside of her legs. "I had no idea you were so petty," she sighed, her voice just barely audible.

His left hand came up and caught her chin firmly with his fingers. "A win by default, by cheating, or by honest skill is still a win no matter how it came about. All that matters in the end is the result, and I will use any means available to reach my end goal," he murmured.

The very air around them seemed to crackle with unusual energy and their eyes burned into each other. The excitement of the race, even including Sherry's heart attack-inducing swerve at the end, was still pumping fast and furious in their blood. Sherry licked her lips and his eyes traced the motion.

"How pushy," Sherry breathed. "What sane woman would ever willingly put up with you?"

He gave her a salacious grin. "Oh, I can think of one such woman," he purred.

Sherry hummed and her eyes half-lidded, her expression becoming coyer. "Hey, Gin?"

"Hmm?"

"I was thinking… I'd rather skip dinner tonight and move straight on to dessert," she said and Gin didn't have to be a mind reader to know that she didn't mean food.

"I was rather hoping that would be the case," he said, sounding both pleased and amused. "So I took the liberty of booking a room for one night at this very hotel we're in the parking lot of."

"Ahh, so that's why you were so insistent about this hotel being the finish line when we were planning the route at the restaurant. I admire your foresight as always, Gin," she said with an appreciative smile.

He chuckled and moved out of her personal space, picking up her helmet as he did so. "Come on, let's go," he said and walked back to his car, Sherry following right behind him. He opened the driver door and carelessly tossed the helmet into the back, but then glanced over his shoulder at the young woman. "Do you want your adult clothes or your child clothes?"

Sherry brought her hand up to her chin in thought. "The antidote is supposed to last approximately twenty-four hours, but works a half-hour faster for me, so I shouldn't even start to turn back into Ai until around nine tomorrow morning. However, I don't know exactly when we'll be leaving either, so it would probably be safer for me to bring both sets, just in case."

"Very well then." Gin reached over and grabbed both bags from the floor. "Here." He tossed her backpack to her and slung the duffle bag's strap over his shoulder, closing and locking the door behind him.

Sherry snickered. "You look silly carrying a duffle bag like that."

"You really shouldn't try and discourage a man from helping you carry your bags," he warned her playfully. "It might come back to bite you when you really need it."

"It's not my fault you only look natural carrying suspicious-looking briefcases," she retorted with a nudge to his arm. "But I guess you would look even more out-of-place than you already do if you weren't carrying _any_ luggage into a hotel while I was carrying two." She suddenly shot him a piercing look. "That's the real reason, isn't it?"

"That's only half of it," Gin admitted with a shrug. "As for the other half…" He gave her a sideways glance. "Do I have to have a reason to do something nice for the woman I love?"

A pink tinge suffused Sherry's cheeks and she turned her head away from him. "I never said you had to have one," she muttered in embarrassment, but he felt her arm wrap around his and hug it to her. Gin grinned to himself and led the way up to the front doors of the hotel.

They stepped through the automatic sliding doors into the hotel lobby and the worker at the front desk greeted them. "Welcome sir, ma'am, do you two already have a reservation?

"Yes, it should be under Jin Haido," Gin answered. He could feel Sherry's amused gaze drilling a hole in his face. It wasn't a clever alias by any means, but really, who would be looking for them way out here?

The woman at the counter moved to the computer and started searching the reservation list. "Ah, here we are. Jin Haido for one night?"

"That's right," he confirmed.

"It looks like you've already paid for the room in advance. May I see your ID?" she asked.

Having expected this, Gin pulled out his wallet and gave her what appeared to be a blank piece of paper. "Will this suffice?"

The receptionist took it and Sherry gasped quietly. "Gin, what are you doing!" she whispered in alarm, squeezing his arm tightly.

"It's alright, Sherry," he whispered back reassuringly.

"But there was nothing-!"

"Alright, your ID checks out," the woman said, instantly halting Sherry's frantic whispering, and gave it back to him. "You will be staying in room 602. Here are your room keys and have a pleasant stay."

Gin gave her a faint smile. "Thank you, miss. Come, Shimi."

Sherry looked like she wanted to both protest the name and ask him how he'd gotten away with presenting a blank piece of paper as an ID, but she kept her tongue in check at least until they were safely in the elevator. "Shimi?" she asked archly.

"It's your own name. I combined the first character from your first name and the first character of your last name, that's all," he explained.

Mollified that he hadn't just assigned her some random name (she didn't like that for some reason), she proceeded to the next question on her mind. "There was nothing written on that paper you gave to the receptionist at the front desk, so why did she think you gave her a proper, legitimate ID card?"

"Ah, that's easy," he said and pulled his wallet back out. "Shortly after you left, the Organization discovered this curious little invention in the possession of one of the aliens going through Customs and it was confiscated."

He withdrew the object in question and passed it to her for observation. "We don't know what it's actually called, but we're currently calling it 'psychic paper' because it appears to read the mind of the person who sees it and present to them exactly what they expect. So, when I presented this psychic paper to the woman at the front desk, she expected to see a valid ID, so she did. Of course, it doesn't actually read a person's mind, but it probably employs some mild form of hypnosis because it doesn't work on the skeptical or those who know the secret of the psychic paper."

"Impressive…!" Sherry said with an approving air. "Something like this would work on most people that you run into without needing to have a stash of ten or fifteen IDs to keep your true identity a secret. I take it this isn't the original?" she asked as she handed the psychic paper back to him.

"No, the original still lives in your Research and Development Lab's active project storage," Gin said as he put the psychic paper back into his wallet. "Those guys have been enthusiastically trying to replicate the effects ever since they got their hands on it and this is one of the first working prototypes that they've finally managed to produce. It's a bit of a hassle having to report my observations back to them every time I use it, but I'm used to it."

As an executive field agent, this was hardly the first time the R&D team had given him prototype alien tech to experiment with, as Sherry well knew. The elevator light dinged, signaling their arrival to the correct floor and the pair of them set off down the carpeted hallway to their assigned room.

"So the psychic paper was discovered at Customs, but how did you guys find it? Did an alien actually try and use it as legal identification to get through?" Sherry asked in disbelief.

"As a matter of fact, they did. It's possible the fake ID would have been discovered as a blank piece of paper anyway, given the natural skepticism of the staff that work in Customs." He let out a soft snicker. "But this alien had the worst possible luck and ended up being inspected by Rum."

"Rum? As in the Number Two member of the Organization?"

"Yeah, sometimes he likes visiting Customs in-person and assisting with inspections. I think that must have been the first department he worked in for the MiB before he became what he is now. Anyway, this alien was screwed the moment he was directed to Rum's line."

Sherry looked at him in confusion. "Why though?"

"Haven't you heard the rumors about Rum, Sherry?" Gin asked with a teasing smile. "The ones about him being a strongly-built man, an effeminate-looking man, or an old man?"

She scowled at him. "Yes, I've heard them. I've had lower-ranking people ask me if _you_ were Rum based on those descriptions, but I told them they were being stupid because everyone knows that Rum has…" Her eyes slowly widened in realization. "a prosthetic eye…"

"Correct, so ocular-based tricks don't work on him. The good eye may still be fooled, but not the prosthetic one. He saw straight through the psychic paper's 'magic' in an instant."

They reached their designated room just as he finished speaking and he used the key to open the door. The light blinked green and he opened the door, allowing Sherry to enter before him.

"A luxury suite? You sure went all out on this retreat, didn't you?" Sherry said with a cursory glance around the hotel room as she stepped inside and dropped her backpack on the floor against the wall.

"Hmph, money's no issue," Gin said with a smirk and followed her, letting the heavy door close behind him and setting her duffle bag next to her backpack.

"Oh, look!" she exclaimed suddenly and ran into the bedroom in the next room over.

He followed her at a more leisurely pace and saw quite plainly what had captured her attention. The window was actually a door that led out onto a balcony and Sherry was already opening it to step out onto the veranda. He held himself at a distance back, able to see what she could just fine from where he stood. There was nothing but vast green forests among the rolling mountain crests as far as the eye could see and the early setting sun cast the landscape in the color of brilliant, orange fire. It was a beautiful view, to be sure, but it paled in comparison to the enchanting beauty before him. With the sun before her, it cast her profile in shadow and bathed her in the dying sunlight. Her lovely reddish-brown hair caught the rays and shone like liquid gold. The amber color perfectly matched the Oloroso variant of the wine she was named for, a naturally dry, high-strength, full-bodied sherry with a light sweetness borne after maturation. Truly, her name was well-chosen. No other alcohol reflected his beloved so poignantly in color and spirit.

Gin approached her then until he was standing right behind her. Sherry turned on the spot as if he'd called her by name and she gazed up at him through coy, half-lidded eyes. A game.

He held his left hand out to her, palm up. An invitation. A dance.

Graceful and delicate as autumn leaves swirling in the wind, she placed her hand into his. Her touch was feather-light and barely present, as if a swift breeze would send it flying away once more.

His fingers closed around her proffered hand and held it tight, but just enough to keep her grounded. To give her an anchor, but never to cage her. He drew her forward, leading her from the balcony into the darker interior, bringing her back into his sheltering arms. Come tomorrow, the wind storm would wrench her away once more, but for now, unless she chose to fly away on her own, he would never let her go.

Sherry's free left hand reached up and caressed his cheek, his jaw, the back of his neck, drawing herself up and pulling him down. His own free hand slipped around her waist, splayed across the small of her back, and traced her spine up to her shoulders, her neck, her jaw, drawing her up and lowering himself down. Their lips met, sweet and soft, an innocent kiss to start, but such sweetness couldn't last. Sherry _had_ warned him she didn't want to play nice today. Her tongue brazenly flicked out and licked his lips, testing for an opening.

His lips parted for her by the smallest fraction and she plunged straight in. Her tongue caressed the length of his and the dark cavern of his mouth and he could feel her slowly-mounting desperation grow. He could feel it in the insistent tugging of her right hand in his left, demanding its freedom to not be held back. Per her wish, he released it and her hand flew straight to the back of his head, nestling and twining her fingers into his long hair. At the same time, her left leg came and wrapped around his leg, just at his calf to start, but it was slowly sliding its way higher. She was trying to climb him, but he couldn't have that just yet.

With his left hand no longer occupied, he brought it around her back, stroking his fingers along the planes of her shoulder blades in preparation. In one singular fluid movement, he pressed his fingers forcibly down the length of her spine and shoved his tongue past her lips into her own mouth, giving no quarter. Sherry moaned both from the rougher physical stimulation and the sudden loss of control, even more so when he squeezed her round cheeks. She loved being in control, but not quite as much as she loved being overpowered and dominated by him, and Gin was more than happy to provide that for her.

Sherry was now putty in his hands and he could easily move them forward to the next phase, but there was something he wanted to check first before they got too far along and he forgot everything except their shared carnal desire. His left hand snaked up along her back, pressing in all the right places to elicit little muffled gasps of delight, and cupped the other side of her face. Sherry broke away, panting heavily due to his deliberate ministrations. She'd been unable to reclaim the air she'd lost through nasal inhalation alone.

"Ready?" he asked once her breathing sounded less desperate.

" _Yes_ ," she said in a low, breathless whisper, her sea-blue eyes burning with lust.

This time, he didn't give her the chance to act first. He dove into her mouth, attacking her lips with fervor and Sherry was not one to remain idle in response to such a display. She fought back and while her one hand remained in his hair, the other slid from his neck down his back, drawing her body even closer to his, pressing her breasts insistently against his chest.

Her ploy succeeded in distracting him from his goal, but not enough to forget it. While one hand tended to her soft mounds, the other carefully explored the planes of her face with his fingers and discovered something unusual. He had felt the fine powder of blush on both cheeks, but the smooth, stickiness of foundation was only on her left cheek, a small streak of it just to the left under her eye. Curious about the oddity and with Sherry already drowning in his kiss, he slowly eased his right hand up her cheek to where the foundation resided. Knowing he only had a brief moment, he dashed his thumb firmly against the spot.

"No!" Sherry shrieked and jerked back. Her hands fell away and she tore out of his arms, turning away from him before he could see her face properly.

Gin didn't move a muscle despite the twitching urge to grasp her shoulders and haul her back into his arms. Her left arm came up and drew level with her face. She seemed to be touching it gingerly to judge from the motions he could see from behind her. Her hand eventually closed into a fist and her head dipped down in a defeated posture.

"Sherry, what do you feel you need to hide from me with makeup?" he asked her gently.

A heavy sigh escaped her and her shoulders hunched forward. Her left hand opened up once more and she pressed her palm against her cheek, removing the rest of the foundation from her skin, but still not letting him see. Her hand fell to rest at her side once she'd finished and she turned slowly, revealing a thin, faint scar across her left cheek, matching the one across his own, and Gin's eyes widened in shock. He knew exactly how she'd gotten that scar because he was the one who gave it to her.

"That's where my gun marked you that night on the roof of the Haido City Hotel," he said. He knew because he had seen the other scars: the ones on her thigh, her arm, and her shoulder. "It wasn't there when I last saw you."

Sherry ducked her head, avoiding his gaze, and absent-mindedly fingered the thin white line. "I first hid it to keep the kids from asking questions," she said quietly. "But I also hid it from you because I knew how much it would upset you that you'd hurt me. You were upset enough when you found the other bullet scars on my body from that night, but you felt better that they were all relatively easy to hide if I wanted. I didn't want you to think that I thought any less of you for leaving me with one on my face too."

"Sherry…" he sighed as he approached her. Now it was she who remained still and watched him.

He reached out to brush some of her short reddish-colored strands of hair behind her ear, gently caressing the white line across her cheek on the way to the crook of her neck. His other fingers snagged those of her right hand and guided them upwards to lay across his own facial scar.

"Now we match," he said simply, turning and kissing her palm then leaning down and kissing her scar.

"Gi~in!" she protested, but a light blush painted her cheeks and she was smiling when he pulled back to get a good look at her face.

"What's wrong? Too affectionate for you?"

"No, it's not, it's…!" she stammered and her blush deepened right before she muttered her next words, "… too tame."

The corner of his lip curled upward into a sly grin. "Ohh? Is that so? Let's do something about that then."

* * *

 _The psychic paper comes from Doctor Who. It's been a while since I've watched any of it though, so I don't remember if they explained how it works or if I got the methodology correct, but that's what I'm using for this._

 _In hindsight after I was going back and rewatching episodes, I found it odd that, despite both Gin and Sherry being shot by a gun across the left cheek, only Gin came away with a scar from the encounter, so I decided to give Shiho a matching one that's easy for her to hide. Since I came to this conclusion after some of the earlier chapters were already written, I had to do a bit of retconning to fit it in._


	10. Three Days with Heiji Hattori: Part 3

**Author's Note: For some reason, when I uploaded chapter nine last week, I never got the alert from FF saying that I had posted a new chapter. Odd.**

 **I tried not to be _too_ explicit in the beginning of this chapter, but well, as I've said before; as characters that I'm writing, Gin and Sherry _do not_ cooperate at all.  
**

 **On a different note, the ending bit of this chapter is the main reason why I had to split "Three Days With Heiji Hattori" into three parts, and it's actually for a plot-related reason. Yes, shockingly, there's plot in the filler chapter.  
**

* * *

Three Days with Heiji Hattori: Part 3

"My god, woman! Was that drug you took an antidote for the Apoptoxin or an aphrodisiac?" Gin gasped and threw his head back on the bed, panting heavily.

With a smug smile on her face, Sherry wiped her mouth clean with the back of her hand and crawled forward over Gin's handsome, sweat-soaked body. "There might be a slight aphrodisiac effect associated with the antidote, but it's difficult to say since it's only been used three times now and twice by me. Kudo _did_ take Ran out to a fancy dinner with the intent of confessing his feelings to her, but unlike me, he's still a virgin," she purred, low and sultry, and covered his mouth with hers, kissing him slow and sensual, tasting every inch of him she could reach.

Gin moaned beneath her and she felt his large hands come up to her shoulders, but then found herself pushed away until she was sitting upright on his stomach, straddling his waist. "You're like a cat in heat," Gin said with a wry chuckle. His hands glided smoothly down her body until they reached her hips wherein he squeezed them and started to sit up. She slid further down his body as he moved forward until she was sitting in his lap and he was gazing lovingly down at her. "But you have to give me a chance to recharge first or else I'll pass out with exhaustion long before the night is over. I don't have a chemically-enhanced libido to match you."

Sherry blushed, but rolled sideways off of him and let him slide off the bed where he knelt down next to his long coat haphazardly discarded on the floor. As soon as she saw the cigarettes and matchbox in his hands, Sherry laughed outright, "Your two greatest vices! If it's not sex, it's smoking!"

Gin ignored her outburst and slotted one of the cigarettes between his teeth then deftly struck a match and lit the end. He extinguished the tiny flame with a flick of his wrist as he took a long drag on the cigarette.

"Does your twin smoke?" she asked as she watched him.

He chuckled and shook his head. It was a bit of a game between them, her trying to learn what she could of Gin's little sister since he refused to reveal her name, even her code name if she had one. "No, she doesn't, and our parents weren't smokers either," he answered.

"You really should cut back on it. It's not healthy," Sherry pointed out.

"I have," he said.

Sherry gave him a skeptical frown. "Since when?"

He glanced over at her and grinned, holding up the cigarette pack for her to see. "Since our last reunion. I used to go through one of these a day. Now I'm down to half a pack."

She raised an impressed eyebrow. "You've cut your chemical consumption in half? Not bad, but what made you finally decide to reduce your smoking intake? You've always been a heavy smoker all five years that I've known you."

"Well…" Gin said with a sly smile on his face, crossing his arms and casually leaning against the dresser directly across from the bed. "A fetching young lady that I am madly in love with may have proposed to me back then and I may have decided I didn't like the idea of cutting my life with her short because of something as stupid as lung cancer if she was being serious."

"Edward…!" she gasped in amazement, her cheeks blushing red of their own accord.

The corner of his lips twitched at the use of his real name. "But once you finish perfecting the Apoptoxin antidote, the next drug you make should be a cure for nicotine addiction."

Her starry-eyed expression disappeared in an instant and she gave a disdainful sniff. "As if it were so easy. Starting from scratch to create such a drug would take years, if it's even possible."

"This coming from the woman who created a drug with the ability to shrink the bodies of adults into those of children," Gin snickered as he turned away from her, looking at the top of the dresser.

"It was a fluke that I made a drug with that effect, and you know it. Besides, creating a drug to combat nicotine addiction would take longer than breaking the habit yourself. You've come this far under your own power, you can go the rest of the way without my help," Sherry insisted, stubbornly not looking at him.

"Do you want anything to eat?"

Her greenish-blue eyes snapped open and she looked back at him. "What?"

Gin, for his part, was staring intently at a long, laminated paper he must have picked up off the dresser. His cigarette pack had taken the paper's place. "I'm ordering room service, so do you want anything? It's not that late in the evening yet, and I imagine your cells use up a lot of energy for the transformations, so if you want any _real_ food before tomorrow morning, now's the time to ask."

"You can't just order room service looking like that!" she protested, but hopped off the bed to join him and read the menu over his shoulder.

He snorted. "Obviously, I'm not going to _answer_ the door while naked, sweet Shiho."

"Ooh, careful, Gin. You're going to make me all hot and bothered again at this rate," she said in a low, teasing purr, stroking her fingers through his long, fine hair.

"Food first, Sherry," he said sternly, however a slight smile tweaked his lips. "After we place the order though, I should have enough time to finish you off as an appetizer before our meal arrives," he murmured seductively.

He was so cruel forcing her to wait. Her loins were already throbbing with renewed lust, and the promise of his head between her thighs making her orgasm wasn't helping at all. "I'm looking forward to it," she said in a husky whisper and stood on tiptoe, planting a soft kiss on his scarred cheek. "Well, I suppose I'll just have this," she said pointing it out on the laminated paper.

Gin sighed in fond exasperation. "Of course you want one of the most expensive items on the menu. Why would I expect otherwise?"

Sherry hummed with a satisfied air. "Aren't I lucky to have such a rich lover? You're the one who said money is no issue," she reminded him.

"As the lady wishes then," he said and left her side for the phone at the desk. "Yes, this is Jin Haido from Room 602. I'd like to order room service…"

It was much colder without his warm body pressed against hers and she was only half paying attention to Gin's phone conversation with the desk worker as she returned to the bed and pulled the top blanket around her shaking shoulders. The sun had long since disappeared behind the mountains, but the moon and the stars had come out in its place and the soft white glow streamed through the balcony window. It glistened magnificently off of Gin's ash-blond hair, revealing the hidden silver strands within. The nightly luminescence also made it possible to see decently without artificial lights. She was glad for it. The nightly solar bodies offered a sort of tranquil serendipity that no man-made light could ever reproduce and Gin never looked finer than under a moonlit sky. If she was the fiery red sunset, then he was the pale silver moon.

"Yes… yes… understood, thank you," Gin said and set the phone back down on the receiver. He started walking back towards the bed and smirked when he saw her bundled up in the blanket. "Cold, Sherry?"

"My furnace walked away from me," she replied.

Gin chuckled and climbed onto the bed with her. "How terrible. I suppose I better warm you back up, shouldn't I? I reckon we have anywhere from ten to twenty minutes until we're interrupted."

"You better get started then," she said with a matching smirk as she shrugged the blanket off her shoulders and laid back down on the bed, spreading her legs for him.

"So demanding," he sighed fondly.

()()()()()

"Oh my god, please, no more," Sherry gasped breathlessly, her fingernails raking his shoulders.

Gin chuckled as he sat up and leaned over her, caressing the side of her face and tucking her sweaty hair behind her ear. "I should hope you've had enough for now, Sherry. Twice in ten minutes is a lot for you," he said gently, though did nothing to mask the smug pride he felt. "Just relax and recuperate with me for a while. We're not going anywhere, you and I."

With a heavy _thwump_ , he fell sideways next to her and pulled her halfway across his chest, cradling her shoulders and idly stroking her short reddish locks. Sherry sighed contentedly and laid her head down over his heart. Her body was still warm and flushed from her orgasm, but she finally seemed to have calmed down from her sexual high. He felt her right hand start lightly tracing patterns across his skin.

"You've changed, Gin," she murmured at last.

He raised an eyebrow in response. "Ohh? How so?"

She smiled and nuzzled her cheek into his chest. "I'm not sure really… you always seemed so formidable and stoic, like a walking ice sculpture able to freeze anyone with a glare. I started developing a crush on you after you and Vodka saved me from that alien that wanted to eat my reproductive organs, but when I realized _you_ were interested in _me_ , I was both thrilled and terrified. No one had ever before looked at me as you did back then, but you were like an impenetrable fortress. I couldn't see how a little girl like me could ever reach you, and a part of me was convinced it would all end horribly for me. Even now, you still give off a bit of that same aura, but it doesn't seem as sharp anymore and it melts away more quickly around me when you don't need it."

"So, what? You're saying you melted my frozen heart?" Gin teased.

"That's ridiculous. Your heart was never frozen," she said with a mock scowl and a playful slap to his shoulder, but the soft smile was quick to reform and she replaced her head back on his chest. "Well-guarded maybe, but not frozen. Even as recently as when I took the Apoptoxin in my lab, you were affectionate with me, but not excessively so, you very rarely lost composure, and it was often difficult for me to tell what you were thinking or feeling."

His treacherous heart skipped a beat and his mouth went dry. He suddenly felt rather light-headed. This… This was no ordinary expression of her feelings. "And now…?" he whispered, his voice hoarse after finally managing to unstick his mouth and form proper words.

"Now…" Sherry began and she raised her head to gaze directly into his eyes. A light blush dusted her pretty face and she smiled shyly. "Now... with me anyways... you're more affectionate… more expressive… and more demonstrative of your feelings, even in public. It doesn't seem so unusual of you to be clingy anymore. Rather than melting a frozen heart, it's more like you've finally allowed me unrestricted access to it."

Gin's sharp green eyes softened into an unmistakably tender expression and his hand that had, until that point, been absently stroking her lovely reddish-brown hair, caressed the length of her neck up to her face and covered her cheek, his thumb smoothing over her fair skin. His heart was light and a gentle warmth was spreading throughout his body that had absolutely nothing to do with Sherry half-laying on top of him. Yes, he supposed she was right. He had sought her first, but through her own merits, this beautiful, perceptive young woman had skillfully weaved her way into the very core of his being and he had allowed her, welcomed her even. She had earned, as she put it, 'unrestricted access to his heart'.

"You've changed too, Sherry," he said quietly.

At once, her fingers stilled and her eyes became guarded. Her brow was furrowed with confusion. "How do you mean?" she demanded.

A playful smile crossed his face. "What, you think I'm the only one capable of change? There's no need to be so defensive, love," he said soothingly, sliding his hand around and massaging the back of her head with his hand, holding her close. "I was just thinking about your behavior today. You were more reckless, yes, but you also seem more light-hearted and playful than you used to be. You're still full of sarcastic comments and your wit is as sharp as ever, but you used to be downright acerbic in the past, if not a tad cruel. Vodka was terrified of you for the longest time because of that wicked mouth of yours."

Sherry's eyes lit up with realization. "Ahh, so _that's_ why he used to clam up whenever he saw me close by! He was really that scared of a thirteen-year-old girl?"

Gin gave her a deadpan glare and flicked her forehead with his finger. "You know how low Vodka's self-esteem is. That _thirteen-year-old-girl_ may have had the face of an angel, but she had the attitude of a queen and her words carried the venom of a viper for all who were unworthy of _her highness's_ favor." He smirked. "You were quite the troublesome little brat back then."

"And you were _attracted_ to that?" she said skeptically.

"More intrigued that such a nice girl as Akemi could have such a little hellion for a sister, especially since she always spoke so fondly of you. I wanted to learn why you were so different from her, but in doing so, I unexpectedly ended up falling in love with you."

Sherry sniffed in amusement and the corner of her mouth quirked into a slight smile. She crossed her arms on his chest and rested her chin upon them. "Well, I guess it only makes sense that I've changed since you last saw me; a lot has happened since then. I've had Vermouth hunt me down and come within seconds of killing me, I've finally come to terms with why I was always so distant with Ran, and I've had time to grow even more attached to those kids than I ever would have thought possible." Her eyes softened and her smile widened into a fond expression. "Maybe their innocence and joyful outlooks are rubbing off on me."

Gin's eyes slowly widened and he stared up at her in amazement. "Could it be...?" he exclaimed. She startled out of her reverie, looking bewildered. "Sherry, you have friends!"

"What?"

"Yes, finally!" he insisted excitedly. "Real friends that you made all on your own without Akemi or I as the instigator! I never thought it would happen, I'm-!"

His tongue froze in his mouth and his joyful expression faltered, his mind already extrapolating to the future the way only _he_ could.

"Hey, Gin, what's wrong? Why are you making that face?" Sherry asked worriedly, her brows contorted with anxiety.

Gin's mouth closed as he stared helplessly at Sherry's pleading expression. She had new friends... but they were outside of the MiB's domain. 'Why can't you have any happiness without suffering for it?' he thought.

"GIN!" She had pushed herself off his chest and her hands were tightly gripping his shoulders, trying to demand answers from his unresponsive form.

There was no happy ending to this situation and Sherry was the one who had to pay for it.

"I'm sorry, Sherry…" he said quietly.

"Huh? Why?!" she snapped, confused and irritated. She didn't understand, but she would shortly.

"When your mission is over… when you finally finish creating the Apoptoxin antidote and can come back home… your friends' memories of you will be erased… because Ai Haibara does not exist."

He could see it, the dawning comprehension and growing horror in her eyes. "No…!" she gasped, her right hand flying to her mouth, her left drawing back to her chest. "No, they can't… I only just… Damn it, _why?!_ " she screamed and harsh, angry tears streamed down her cheeks.

She backed away from him and her hands came up to the sides of her head, tearing at the roots, her expression wild and her eyes unseeing. Only pure, ragged noise escaped her throat until she nearly choked on her tears and bent over her legs in a fetal position, moaning in anguish. It tore his heart to see her like this. He had only seen her in such terrible, raw pain once before, back when she discovered Akemi had been killed. Then, just as now, he had been unable to do anything significant to ease the unbearable agony she was suffering from. The only thing he _had_ been able to do then was hold her and let her cry as he shared her grief over Akemi's death. Now though, he didn't know if she would even want him to touch her. Maybe she hadn't made the connection yet, but she would only have two options available to her when her mission was over. Sherry would either have to return to him in the Men and Black and lose her friends, or she could keep her friends, but only if she gave up the Men in Black forever, which meant forgetting everything... even him...

Gin sat up and shifted to sit on his knees. He caught her arms at the elbows and gently lifted her up. She raised her head and glassy, swollen red eyes set above blotchy cheeks gazed helplessly up at him. He was no idealist; he would not promise everything would be alright. Without a word, he pulled her into his arms and crushed her petite form tight against him. Her arms slipped under his and clung to him desperately. Her body shook terribly from her heavy sobs and his bare shoulder was soon wet with salty tears, but he would never let her go, not ever. Not until the day came when she finally chose what was best for her and pushed him away. He was not convinced that he was the best choice and this new social circle she had become a part of was merely a reminder of that.

She had intrigued him all those years ago from the first moment he laid eyes on her that fateful snowy afternoon and the more time he had spent in her company, the more addicted to her he had become, like finding a rare wine with a taste he simply couldn't get enough of. In his obsession and desire, despite the warnings from Curaçao, the threats from Akemi, _and_ the questionable legal implications involved, he had pursued Sherry, a young teen barely old enough to be a woman. Not too much to be considered either forceful or demanding, but enough to establish he was both undeniably _present_ and equally _interested_. Young and too innocent to know better, flattered by the affections of a much older man, and flush with the first stirrings of sexual desire, it was inevitable, even natural, that she would choose him. How could she not when he had lured her to him every step of the way? Yes, he had snared the black lamb of the Men in Black: the blossoming, quick-tongued little spitfire that had first intrigued him with her hellish ways.

He was truly an awful person. Manipulative, controlling, possessive, twisted, some might even say evil.

Yet, was it not, in fact, the other way around? That she had captured him instead? It would be apt to describe his love for Sherry as a prison of which she was the sole jail warden. The power she had over his heart was incredible and she had the power to leave him any time she wished. His only power had been to convince her not to, to create the illusion that he was all there was. He had lived on the outside once and he had chosen the Men in Black, but little Sherry had not been given that choice, having been submerged into its existence from the moment of her birth. While the Men in Black was by no means a crime syndicate, it was just as isolated and secretive as the Black Organization it pretended to be. In her time away from him, _truly_ living on the outside mostly untouched by the Organization for the first time in her life, Sherry was slowly peeling back the veil and exploring another way to live, crushing the carefully-crafted illusion between her fingers. Her new friends and her deep attachment to them were proof enough. He was so selfish. He needed her, desperately, but she did not need _him_. Did not need to _choose_ him. He supposed it wouldn't be long that she would be forced to make her choice and decide between her old life and her new one. Until that time came, he would continue to hold on to this fragile, broken girl who was still trying to pull her life back together in the wake of her sister's passing.

()()()()()

 _Next morning…_

A violent surge of pain threw Sherry forcefully from her previously peaceful sleep with a yelp. "What?" she gasped in shock. "What was- _AAH!_ " she shrieked as another explosion blasted through her and she violently tore out of Gin's arms, curling around her aching, screaming body.

"Sherry! Sherry, what the hell's going on?!" Gin demanded. She distantly felt his hands on her shoulders.

"I-I don't know!" she exclaimed, panting heavily. "I just- just woke up- _Aiie!_ -to this!"

"But this… Isn't this the Apoptoxin symptoms?"

" _Ngnh!_ Impossible!" she protested, but she could feel her panic taking hold. "It hasn't- It hasn't been twenty-four hours yet!" Another jolt shot through her and she clenched her teeth.

"Sherry, it has to be the Apoptoxin! Nothing else makes you scream like this!" he was trying to keep calm, but she could still hear it, the fear edging its way into his deep voice.

"You think I don't know that! Damn it, why's it still so dark?! Gin, what- _Grah!_ -what time is it right now?!"

She was too incapacitated to see his movements, but she felt his long hair brush along her back when he turned his head. "It's 5:56 AM."

"No way…! So early?" she gasped. "I should have had about four more hours-!"

Her words were cut off with another body-shattering vibration from her heart and she felt sweat break out across her forehead. It was no wonder, her body felt so hot and feverish already. But wait, that couldn't be right! That was one of the symptoms, especially for the transformation back to her child form, but it was supposed to come later in the process. She shouldn't be experiencing it just yet! She screwed her eyes shut and focused on just breathing, even as the white-hot inferno built up along with the familiar sensation of melting bones, and burst outward, evicting a tortured scream from her throat. The pain faded fast and she was still breathing, still conscious. She glanced upward out of the corner of her eye up at Gin. He briefly swam out of focus, but her vision righted itself quickly. He looked bigger… taller… and just as bewildered as she felt. So... she really was… back to being Ai Haibara.

"Gin… time?" she asked tiredly.

He quickly glanced over at the clock on the night stand. She saw his mouth thin and his brow furrow before answering. "It's… only 6:15…" he said slowly and looked back at her, his pensive expression unchanging. "That's only twenty minutes."

Haibara nodded slowly and shakily pushed herself up into a sitting position with her small, weakened arms. "Ten minutes shorter than last time… four hours before I should have changed back…"

Soft fabric brushed against her bare back and a blanket came around her shoulders. She gripped the edges and held them around her, giving Gin a silent nod of thanks. He moved to sit next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her snug against his side. She leaned her head against him, her cheek only coming up to rest on his elbow, and closed her eyes, relishing in his warmth and his solid, unwavering presence.

"Why do you think that happened, Sherry?" Gin asked softly, referring to the shorter drug duration.

She'd started thinking through that the moment she'd finished returning to Ai Haibara. "Kudo told me… before I met him… that when he discovered the baijiu had been responsible for returning him to his original form… he had tried to use it a second time later, but was unsuccessful." Her breathing was still quite shallow, but she kept on talking. "His body… had already developed an immunity against the growth properties of baijiu on Apoptoxin victims. And people who take recreational drugs… they often end up using more or resort to the more powerful ones… because their bodies start building a resistance to the type and amount they _had_ been using… and they can't obtain the same effect as when they first started. It can happen with medical drugs too… I think… that might be what happened. My body is building a resistance to the antidote… and if I keep using it to transform, as long as the antidote is only temporary… I'll eventually be unable to return to my adult body."

A heavy silence fell between them after her pronouncement, her words hanging over them like a death sentence. If she continued to use the incomplete antidote with reckless abandon, then she was doomed to remain as Ai Haibara for the rest of her life, regardless of what she wanted… which life she _wanted_ to choose. Maybe it was because the silence was so prominent that the sudden ringing that broke it sounded so loud and made her jump. The only reason she didn't end up falling sideways off the bed was because of Gin's arm still holding her.

"Hm? That's my phone. Who's calling me so early?" Gin muttered under his breath and released her. He slipped off the bed and knelt down next to his coat once again. From within, he retrieved his ringing cellphone and though his back was to her, she saw him hold it up and glance at the screen showing the caller ID. "Curaçao?" he said, sounding surprised.

Haibara's level of alertness increased. Curaçao? She didn't know anyone by that name and it didn't sound like a typical English or Japanese word. Was it another alcohol codename?

Gin answered the call and brought the phone up to his ear. "Yes, it's me, why are you calling? You know I'm not supposed to be working today… I was woken up early by circumstances that were beyond my control, now what's this about? … A Grade A double- but that requires at least a Class 2-D license to own and operate… Let me guess, they don't have one… That's the fifth one this month! Okay, Sherry and I will take care of it. I'll call you back in bit for the rest of the information." With that, Gin hung up and turned to her. "Get dressed. There's a Gorda nearby in illegal possession of a high-class weapon and we're the closest operatives around to deal with it."

Despite the potential danger involved, Haibara happily threw back the blanket and retrieved her child clothes from the bag she'd brought in with her. It'd been so long since she'd done a field assignment like this, she couldn't help being excited. That caller though... She'd heard of a lot of codenames even if she hadn't met the person attached to them, but Curaçao was one she was unfamiliar with.

"Hey, Gin, who was that Curaçao person you were talking to just now? They seemed surprised that you were awake early," she said, half-turning to look at him as she finished pulling her shorts on. Gin himself was already half-dressed and in the process of slipping his green turtleneck on when she asked the question.

"Oh, Curaçao? She's Rum's confidante and a very high-ranking member. I suppose the best way to describe her role is that of a multi-purpose secretary. If Rum needs something done, she's generally the one he sends to carry out his will," he said with a slight huff, looking mildly annoyed.

His head disappeared amidst the green fabric then reappeared through the shirt collar. Both hands reached up to the back of his neck and pulled his hair out, flipping it backward from the constraints of his shirt. He no longer annoyed, but then his eyes met hers and his mouth thinned slightly. What did that expression mean?

Before she could ponder on it though, he opened his mouth and said, "Curaçao is my twin sister."

Haibara gaped at him. "Your…?"

She'd known she would learn the name of Gin's twin eventually, even figured she probably had a codename given how highly-ranked her older brother was, but she never expected she'd learn of the woman's identity so suddenly.

"Sherry, don't just stand there, we have to hurry. Time is of the essence." Gin said. He was already sliding his arms into his long black trench coat.

His words brought her back to reality and she jumped. "Right, right," she muttered distractedly, scrambling to grab the clothes Gin had torn off her last night.

She slung the bag over her shoulders, grabbed the other bag that had her adult clothes from yesterday, and joined Gin waiting for her at the door. "Is that everything?" he asked.

"Do you have the room keys?" she asked. He held them up. "Then yes. Let's go."

They left the room quickly and headed straight for the elevator halfway down the hall. Of course, being that it was not quite 6:30, it was still very quiet all around them, almost stifling so. Haibara shifted her shoulders to adjust the bag straps as she watched the numbers on the screen steadily count down. It was difficult to believe that she hadn't been awake for even an hour yet, and she had already transformed back into a kid, was going to help Gin with a field assignment, and had finally learned the elusive name of his sister. The elevator dinged and opened for them. Gin's long legs carried him out first, but she just managed to catch hold of his coat before he walked too far away from her. He peered down at her from beneath his long bangs.

"Give me your car keys," she said without preamble. "I can get the car started up while you check us out."

A smirk flitted across his face. "Hmph. Divide and conquer, I like it."

From within his coat, he pulled out the keys and dropped them into her hand. She caught them and headed straight for the front doors while Gin turned left at the hotel reception desk. The sky was already beginning to lighten, though the sun had not yet crested the peaks, and Haibara ran straight to the black Porsche. She shoved the key into the lock and turned it. Hearing the click, she opened the door and clambered inside. She haphazardly threw both her bags over the seat into the back and slotted the key into the ignition. The driver's seat was set so far back to accommodate Gin's legs that even as Shiho Miyano, she didn't think she'd be able to reach the pedals without first moving the seat forward. In her current state, she didn't even try.

Clinging on to the steering wheel with one hand and the key in the ignition in the other, Haibara walked her feet forward until she felt the three pedals, the gas, the brake, and the clutch. She supposed most of the modern Porsches were probably automatic models these days, but Gin's was a true vintage from the late 1950s where automatic wasn't an option. Fortunately for her, not only had she learned how to ride a motorcycle, but Gin had taught her how to drive his car 'in the event of an emergency'. That being said, she had never driven his precious baby on any roads, him not having trusted her with it outside of an empty parking lot under the supervision of either himself or Vodka.

It'd been so long since she'd driven it though that she couldn't remember if the clutch needed to be pushed in to start the car or if it just needed to be pushed when shifting from the brake to the gas and when changing gears. Well, better safe than sorry. She pushed in the clutch as far as it would go with one foot, pushed on the brake with her other foot, and turned the ignition. The car roared to life and she took her foot off the clutch now that it was definitely not needed. She peered over the edge of the window and saw Gin striding briskly out the front door.

"You made good time," she complimented as he opened the door.

"Then maybe Curaçao won't be too annoyed at me for once," he said with a smile and replaced her foot on the brake with his. She moved over into the passenger's seat and he slid in, closing the door behind him.

"What are we going to do about my motorcycle?" she asked.

"It'll have to stay here at the hotel for the moment. I'll have someone pick it up and take it to Chianti's villa later," he said. From within an inside chest pocket of his coat, he pulled out his cellphone, dialed a few numbers and then gave it to her. "Hold this for me while I drive. I'm calling Curaçao back."

She could hear the other end of the line ringing without holding the phone to her ear and realized he must have put the call on speaker phone. "Wait, Gin, does she know I'm-?"

She didn't get the chance to finish her question before the woman answered, _"Good morning again, Gin. Are you ready for the rest of the information now?"_

It was her first time hearing the voice of Gin's sister, the woman codenamed Curaçao, and her first impression of her was that… she _sounded_ like she was related to Gin. They didn't have the same voice at all, but the smooth, rhythmic inflection of her speech and the business-like tone were shockingly similar. Her voice also carried the slightly playful intonation that Haibara recognized as sibling teasing.

"Yes, Sherry and I are in the car, so tell us where we're going first."

" _I'll upload it to the GPS in your car."_

"Understood," he said and pushed a button on the dashboard.

Immediately, the top of the dash flipped up to reveal a small screen that came to life with a flash of blue light and a map appeared. On the map, there was a blue triangle indicating their position, but nothing else. Seconds later, a red circle appeared on the map and a purple line connected the triangle to it.

"Hm. About ten minutes away. You weren't kidding; that's not far from here at all," Gin muttered as he observed the map.

" _Told you so,"_ Curaçao said with a teasing lilt to her voice.

"Right then…" Gin shifted the car into first gear and started driving out of the parking lot. "So, we're confiscating a Grade A, double-shot plasma rifle from an unlicensed user, a Gorda whose native name is Chisenvaal, but goes by Riku Masaki here on Earth. Is that right?"

" _A concise and accurate summation."_

Gin frowned slightly. "The name doesn't sound familiar to me, but Gordas are semi-common. Any previous criminal record to speak of?"

" _Not really. Just a few cases of petty theft and shoplifting-"_

"-But nothing that suggests illegal high-class weapons possession is part of their usual fare," Gin finished.

" _We also have reason to believe that the weapons dealer Chisenvaal purchased the gun from is close by."_

"Eh? Why, was the gun still tagged?" Haibara asked in disbelief before she could stop herself. She'd been letting Gin do all the talking at this point because as she still hadn't been officially introduced to the woman, she had felt awkward about the idea of butting in.

" _Ahh, little Miss Sherry, four years since Gin started dating you, and at last we meet, in a sense. Since I don't hear him protesting, I suppose this means my big brother has finally let you in on my identity, though I don't know_ _ **why**_ _he kept it a secret for so long. Really Gin, I know you're paranoid, but this was ridiculous, even for you."_

Haibara wasn't sure whether the oddest thing was hearing Gin actually being called 'big brother' or hearing someone else poke fun at him. No wonder he'd known how to handle her attitude when she was younger. He'd been putting up with that kind of behavior for about twenty years already.

"So, you know about me and Gin, Miss Curaçao-?"

Gin snorted loudly and laughed not at all quietly to himself. "Her? A 'Miss'? Ha!"

" _Don't be an ass!"_ Curaçao snapped. When she spoke again, her tone was back to being calm and polite. _"You don't have to call me 'Miss', Sherry. Just Curaçao will do just fine, but yes, I know about you and Gin. To be fair, I've known about you since my creepy, evil twin started obsessing over you when you were only thirteen, buuut since you haven't been scarred for life and run from him in terror, I suppose he must be doing_ _ **something**_ _right."_ Haibara could practically hear her rolling her eyes in skepticism.

"Oh, and I suppose Rum was _soo_ much better," Gin bit out with unusually venomous sarcasm.

" _I was already eighteen and Rum_ _ **still**_ _waited until I was twenty."_

"He was double your age!"

" _ **You**_ _were the one walking a fine line between legal and illegal! **Fifteen** , Gin! You couldn't have waited until she was **at least** eighteen?!"_

"Hey, hey, guys, don't fight!" Haibara protested. She had the distinct impression that this was not the first time they'd argued about this. "Curaçao, it's okay. Even if legally, it was a little questionable..."

It was more than 'a little', but Gin had plenty of opportunities to seduce her before the night she finally lost her virginity to him, and he'd always been the one to hold back in their relationship. It wasn't his fault she had been too young and stubborn and aggressive to take 'no' for an answer.

"... Gin's been really good to me these past five years," she continued. "You don't have to worry; he's never once broken his promise to Akemi."

Silence fell briefly between the occupants in the car and on the phone, and it was broken by Curaçao who released a heavy sigh. _"Okay… I'm sorry Sherry. I was only acquainted with your sister through Gin, but he always had nothing but good things to say about her. I actually thought that_ _ **they**_ _might start dating before Akai came into the picture, but when I learned he'd started pursuing_ _ **you**_ _, young as you were, I was furious. Mama and Papa had raised us better than that. But when Akemi didn't interfere, then I decided I wouldn't either. As long as she was okay with his actions, then so was I. Regardless of the circumstances **then** , your relationship is legal **now** , so if you're still happy with Gin after all this time, then I guess I'll let it go. You hear that, Gin? I'm letting this go, so don't make me regret it or I'll pummel you into dust, twin or not!"_

"I hear you, I hear you," Gin sighed wearily.

" _Right, maybe we should start over. I'm Emma, the good Kuroda twin, codenamed Curaçao. It's nice to finally meet you, Shiho Miyano."_

"Ah, no, the pleasure is all mine, Emma Kuroda. And… it's not much, but thank you for thinking of me back then."

" _Any time, Sherry,"_ she said gently and Haibara didn't have to see her face to imagine she had the same slight smile that Gin often wore.

"Alright, I let you two get off-topic because this is your first time interacting with each other, but we have a job to do," Gin reminded them. "Curaçao, why does the Organization believe the weapons dealer is close to where Chisenvaal is?"

" _You already know about the four other instances of illegal weapons usage this month alone. Well, the Organization has been following up on leads regarding their original source, and the best we'd been able to narrow it down until now was in the mountain range you're currently driving,"_ Curaçao explained.

"Fair enough, but what changed that you called me so early?"

" _A local convenience store's outdoor security camera caught Chisenvaal on video with a large, suspicious-looking chrome case and the MiB's National Surveillance System picked up on it and alerted the proper persons. The investigation of the footage of the case's size, strength, and material type suggests the Grade A double-shot plasma rifle I mentioned earlier, but also, it looked like the vacuum seal was still unbroken."_

"But plasma weapons aren't vacuum-sealed at all unless they're being prepared for interplanetary or intergalactic space travel," Haibara said.

" _Exactly."_

"I see," Gin said, smirking slightly. "An alien, whose only criminal history is petty theft, just carrying around a high-powered and still vacuum-sealed plasma rifle in the open? Sounds like a smuggling operation to me."

" _That's what the Organization believes too."_

"So, we're to apprehend Chisenvaal, confiscate the plasma rifle from her possession, and see if we can interrogate her for information about this smuggling operation," Haibara summarized.

" _You got it, little Sherry!"_ Curaçao said brightly.

"Thanks for the briefing. Be sure to have people on stand-by ready to respond in a moment's notice. This may turn out to be bigger than the two of us can handle. I won't call you back, but I'm sure you'll hear everything from Rum or 'that person' himself after Sherry and I have done our part," Gin said.

" _Okay, bye Gin, and take care, Sherry."_

"I will, Curaçao. Thank you," Haibara said and hung up.

Almost immediately, Gin grumbled, "Damn talkative pest."

Haibara smirked as she handed Gin's phone back to him. He took it from her and repocketed it. "That's the job of a younger sister, to get their older sibling in trouble with the significant other. You wouldn't _believe_ how often I embarrassed Akemi in front of Akai with something I said."

"I can believe it," he retorted with a knowing look.

"Well, she definitely sounds related to you. And who'd have thought just a few minutes of conversation would be so insightful?" she said with a teasing glint in her eyes. "I guess your sister and Rum are in some kind of relationship and you're still not happy about it?"

He just glared at her out of the corner of his eye and she giggled.

"Well, that answers that question. I already knew your mother was German, but I didn't expect for you to call your dad by the English 'Papa', rather than the German 'Vater' or the Japanese 'Otou-san'. Your sister respected mine and she was unhappy about our relationship forming, not because she didn't like me, but because she was afraid I would get hurt by you. And best of all, her real name is Emma. Emma and Edward Kuroda. Kinda predictable that twins would be given the same first initial like that."

"That was our mother's doing."

"I figured as much. On a different topic, Curaçao mentioned four other instances of illegal weapons usage this month?" she said, changing the subject.

"Yeah, the others were all in possession of similar Grade A and AA plasma weapons, but were a lot more skillful than our current culprit in both hiding them _and_ using them. We were honestly lucky to catch the ones we did, but that's what bothers me."

"Oh? How come?" she asked, surprised.

"Successful smuggling relies on proper timing and planning with a bit of luck, and this is especially true if large quantities of items are being smuggled in illegally. There's a risk that a small portion of the cargo will be found and confiscated, but most of it will probably safely make its way through the security measures, particularly in countries with more lax regulations. Speed by itself is not a critical aspect of successful large-scale smuggling operations. The fact that we've caught so many of these high-powered weapons suggests only one thing: the original source is carrying them in bulk."

"And does our catching them in such a short timeframe mean anything as well?"

"It does," he said darkly. "Whoever's behind this is feeling bold enough that they don't care about the law enforcement."

Haibara smirked. "Then let's make sure we remind them _why_ they should care about us." She pushed one of the buttons just below the radio and the clock.

The dash in front of her flipped over 180 degrees and revealed two shiny silver handguns on a velvet cushion. They were similar in shape to a Glock pistol, but more rounded and with dull blue streaks all along the barrels and in the bottom left corner of the cushion were two large fluorescent blue cartridges. Set in the right bottom corner was a completely different-looking cartridge in fluorescent red.

"I'll just borrow one of these 'Firestorms' as a safety precaution if you don't mind," she said as she picked one up and loaded one of the blue cartridges into it. Instantly, the dark blue lines along the barrel of the gun lit up with the same brightness of the cartridge. "Do you want to use the other one for this operation or would you rather use the plasma converter for the Beretta like you usually do?"

Gin tsked in annoyance. "I'll go with the Firestorm this time."

Haibara's eyes widened. "That's new," she muttered as she picked up the left-handed model and loaded the other plasma cartridge into the gun. "Any particular reason?"

He reached into his jacket and removed his signature weapon from its shoulder holster, placing it carefully in her hand. "Yeah, something went wrong the last time I used the plasma converter." She put the Beretta on the cushion the Firestorm had previously rested on and held the Firestorm out for Gin to take. He did so and replaced it in his shoulder holster while he continued talking. "Fortunately, I didn't see any damage with the functionality of the Beretta itself when I serviced it, so the problem's likely in the conversion process, but I've been so busy that I haven't had a chance to take the cartridge to the labs and troubleshoot it."

"Poor you," she teased. "I presume you already have a game plan?"

"I want this guy apprehended as quick as possible. Just one warning to surrender peacefully and that's it and we should bring the portable dehydrator pods for temporary containment until we can bring her in for processing. Gordas look a lot like gray potatoes on tree-stump-like legs. In general, they aren't that smart, but they're very resilient to make up for it, so don't be afraid to shoot. It'll take more than a few shots of plasma to accidentally kill one, no matter where you strike it. Don't try and engage it in close-combat either. You won't win and you'll end up flying with half the bones in your body broken from one punch."

"So you're saying that if Chisenvaal gives us trouble, then we _have_ to shoot to subdue her?"

"Pretty much. They don't have any _weak points_ per se, but if you concentrate fire in the middle of their bodies, you can compromise their core and throw off their center of gravity."

"And after we've done that?"

A wide, maniacal grin spread across Gin's face. It was not unlike the one he'd worn when confronting her on top of the Haido City Hotel when he thought she was an alien imposter. Not even his expressions at the shooting range yesterday could compare to that of the monster lurking behind his eyes that caused a shiver to run down her spine. Then he said in a low, savage voice, "I squeeze her for everything she knows about the one who illegally sold her that plasma rifle."

She supposed this was the reason Curaçao called him the 'evil' twin. "Since I'm not officially supposed to be taking part in such field assignments, I'll stay hidden out of the way and offer you support cover."

"I appreciate it. Oh, and take this too, just in case."

From _another_ inside pocket of his coat (she swore, the man's coat must be made of nothing but pockets), he pulled out the neuralyzer and tossed it in her direction. She caught it with ease then popped open the middle storage compartment and fished around for a bit. As soon as her hand brushed against a smooth cloth, she grasped it and pulled it out, revealing it to be a long black sash, exactly like the one Gin used to tie his coat shut. The event that had given rise to the necessity of him storing a spare belt in the middle compartment of his car had been horrifically embarrassing at the time, but today, it would serve her well in holding on to the neuralyzer while keeping her hands free. If there were any civilians around when they caught up to and apprehended Chisenvaal, then it was her responsibility to make them forget everything. Gin would be too preoccupied with the Gorda. Haibara was hoping that the early morning hour would work in their favor and she wouldn't have to worry about needing to erase anyone's memories. She wrapped the black fabric around the handle of the neuralyzer then looped the sash around her waist and up across her chest, tying it off at her shoulder.

"Okay, we're getting close now," Gin murmured.

Their triangle on the screen was almost on the dot. Instead of carrying through with the rest of the drive though, Gin parked the car off to the side. Haibara got out when Gin stopped the car and rejoined him at the trunk. He popped it open and she quickly scanned the interior. Finding exactly what she was looking for, she picked out one of the foot-long dehydration pods and the alien-tuned infrared tracker while Gin pinned an energy displacement shield to the front of his turtleneck in the center of his chest. She tapped a few keys on the control panel to specify Gorda physiology and adjust for the current search area. After a few seconds, the screen adjusted and a red blip appeared some kilometers southwest of their current position. She handed the tracker to Gin and he accepted the offering, nodding silently at the information and handed it back to her. They both got back into the car without a word and Gin resumed driving. Haibara kept her gaze fixed on the tracker screen and gave him directions about Chisenvaal's location in relation to them while he made sure they didn't go off the road.

"Gin, we're less than 500 meters away," she warned him after a while.

"How has the target's speed been?" he asked.

"Is a Gorda's normal walking pace usually slow?" she countered.

"Surprisingly for their size, no."

"Then Chisenvaal's speed has been normal. She's not on the run and doesn't appear to suspect that law enforcement is chasing after her already," she answered. "So, are we going to pull up in the car, full-stop, right in front of her or are we going to approach stealthily on foot?"

"The latter," Gin said immediately. "I don't want my Porsche totaled by a rampaging Gorda."

"Can't have that, now can we?" Haibara said with a teasing smirk as Gin once more pulled off to the side of the road and parked his car.

They got out and double-checked they had all of the necessary equipment before looking at the other and nodding once. It'd be really bad if they were caught unprepared without any chance for back-up arriving quickly. Looking at the screen of the infrared tracker, it told her that Chisenvaal was still moving along the direction of the road, but was a good way 'off-the-path' in the nearby forest so to speak. Was she on her way to a hiding spot or in-transit to the next town over? Either way, the possibility of needing to use the neuralyzer on anyone had just gone _way_ down. Gin had just drawn his gun from the shoulder holster when she handed the tracker to him once more. This time when he took it, he didn't give it back, but held it in his right hand close to his chest as he quickly stalked forward, his left hand pointing the loaded gun down at the ground.

Haibara fell into step several meters back, keeping one eye on him and the other on their surroundings as they moved. It was both nostalgic and refreshing how easily she slipped back into the old rhythm of working on a field assignment with Gin. By training and preference, she was a biochemist and most of her work for the Organization had focused around that, but there were times she'd had to help out with field assignments and even as Sherry, Gin had always taken up front position, his greater experience enabling him to react and take advantage situations much quicker than she could have. Being further back also let her cover his blind spots while reducing the danger risk to herself.

Gin slowed down abruptly and she halted too. He was crouched slightly and his shoulders were tense with anticipation. His right arm moved and Haibara knew he'd shoved the tracker into his jacket, stuffing out of the way. His right hand free, he silently pointed to his ear and made a motion as if to cup it, then waved his hand forward. 'Listen and follow'. He didn't wait for a response from her (and wasn't expecting one either) and resumed moving forward at a slower pace. Haibara strained her ears trying to hear what Gin had while trying to keep as quiet as possible. But then she eventually heard it, a sound so low it was almost infrasonic, a heavy thrumming sound. Was that the Gorda? She didn't see any sign of it yet and Gin's description of the species had left her with the impression that they were at least human-sized, if not bigger. Well, Gin knew better than she did what they were looking for; she would just follow his lead.

The pair of them stalked quietly through the slightly brighter forest (the only sign that any real time had passed) when Gin stopped again and pointed to something a little off to his right center. This time she saw it: the uninteresting figure of a tall human woman. Haibara knew full-well that it was probably Chisenvaal, or rather her legal alias Riku Masaki, especially considering the large, strange-looking case she was carrying without apparent difficulty in only one hand, but she'd still been hoping to see the alien's true form.

"Chisenvaal!" Gin shouted clear through the trees to the Gorda. Haibara quickly scrambled behind a tree before she was seen and set the containment pod on the ground next to her. "This is the Men in Black! You are under arrest for illegal possession of a restricted weapon! I'm giving you only _one_ chance to surrender the weapon now and come quietly or else I'm bringing you in by force!"

What happened next wasn't so much a roar as it was a blast of noise that pounded directly into her skull. She belatedly realized it was laughter and then Chisenvaal spoke in a deep, booming voice. **"WITH ONLY ONE MAN? I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY, MIB SCUM!"**

"Okay, Sherry, you heard her, get ready…!" Gin warned.

The ground beneath them literally started shaking in a rapid, rhythmic pattern. Alarmed, Haibara glanced around her hiding place and her jaw fell open in shock. The human skin had been discarded and in its place stood a four-meter-tall, oblong-shaped, stone-gray behemoth with thick legs carrying it forward straight towards Gin at an alarmingly-fast rate. Gin, on the other hand, planted his feet and aimed directly in the center of the Gorda's massive bulk, unfazed by the several tons of alien charging like a bull elephant. Three shots of crackling hot blue plasma blasted out of Gin's gun in quick succession, straight at the Gorda. The first shot landed on-target and didn't appear to do anything and neither did the second, but when the third made impact, the Gorda's forward motion faltered and she stumbled, but her tough skin was still undamaged. Gin wasn't kidding when he said Gordas were tough.

"We have to wear her down. I'll keep her focus on me and you attack from the rear," Gin explained quickly and darted right, away from her position and out of the path of the rampaging Gorda.

The Gorda may have had incredible strength, a body like a fortress, and could run fast, but she was too big to be able to keep up with Gin's sudden change of direction and, as she skidded to a halt, tossing huge swaths of dirt up into the air in the process, Haibara observed that it took her quite a while to slow down enough to turn at all. The task of wearing her down long enough to compromise her core no longer seemed like quite such an impossible task as long as the two of them managed to stay out of her trajectory. Even if Chisenvaal did get too close to Gin and he took a hit, the energy displacement shield he'd armed himself with _should_ be strong enough to protect him, she hoped…

Chisenvaal took off once more in Gin's direction, away from her and Haibara took her chance to move out from behind the tree to take aim at the center of the Gorda's unprotected back. She waited… taking into account the Gorda's natural running gait, the distance, the lack of wind… and squeezed the trigger three times. Blue plasma shot out and just like Gin's first shots, only the last one seemed to have any effect. She quickly fired another one, and this time the Gorda grunted in pain, as if she'd actually felt that one, but then an explosion of blue struck her from the front and she roared. She had _definitely_ felt that. Gin moved into view once more and the Gorda, again, had to slow down to change direction and go after him. Together, she and Gin tag-teamed against Chisenvaal in this way and the Gorda surprisingly never once tried to change tactics (Gin was right, they weren't that smart) until at last, something changed. A small crack had appeared in the center of her back.

"Gin, her back is starting to crack!" she called out to him.

"Her front too!" he shouted back. "One more triple volley should be enough to end this, especially if we both hit her at the same time!"

Haibara moved sideways into a more open area and fixed her aim on the crack. "Okay, I'm ready!"

"On three then! One, two, _three!_ "

She fired off three shots and they struck her target right in the center of the crack at the same time Gin's reached their mark. Upon impact, the single crack Haibara had aimed for widened into a network of crevices expanding outward and the Gorda released a blood-curdling shriek of agony. She came to a halt, bent forward slightly, and then toppled sideways. Haibara literally felt her feet leave the ground from the vibration of the fall.

She exhaled in relief and went back to the tree she'd originally hidden behind to retrieve the containment pod. She first made another loop in the black sash as a makeshift holster for the Firestorm and then picked up the containment pod. Haibara opened up the back panel and punched in the activation code to prime the device for criminal dehydration. The light sensor at the top part of the panel above the numbers keypad lit up with a yellow light and the pod hummed in her hands. It would take about a minute or two to warm up and the light would turn green when it was ready, but she wasn't worried. Gin still needed to interrogate Chisenvaal on what she knew about the weapons smuggling and she had no idea how long that would take.

She turned around to start walking back to Gin and the Gorda when she faltered mid-step, taking in the scene before her. Chisenvaal was still laying sideways on the ground and Gin was standing next to her with the confiscated chrome case in one hand and his gun in the other pressed right into the heavily-cracked, smoking gray flesh of her belly with a cruel, twisted smile on his face.

" **PLEASE! HAVE MERCY!** _ **MERCY!**_ **"** Chisenvaal begged in her deep, booming voice. Haibara guessed that was just how Gordas naturally sounded.

Gin chuckled darkly. "Oh, but I already offered it, remember? I gave you the option to surrender without making a fuss and you rejected it. Even so, surely even _you_ can appreciate this kind of mercy. Instead of killing you, I'm letting you live. Isn't that nice of me?"

Haibara clutched the containment pod instinctively, staring fearfully at the scene before her. It was not the first time that she had seen Gin interrogating a criminal for information like this and it gave her no pleasure to witness it again. _Pretending_ to be a ruthless murderer was one thing. Gloatingly threatening someone's life with intent was another matter entirely.

"Make no mistake though; your life means nothing to me and I have no hang-ups about killing pitiful small fry like you if you waste my time and don't give me the information I'm looking for."

The irony of Gin calling something over four meters tall and weighing several tons 'small' was not lost on Haibara.

" **YOU WOULDN'T DARE,"** Chisenvaal said bravely, but even Haibara could hear the uncertain trembling in her voice.

Gin looked frighteningly amused. "Ohh? You believe that, do you?" He lowered the pitch of his voice and it became all the more sinister for it. "Then let me fill you in on who exactly I am, so that you'll understand _perfectly_ just what kind of 'MiB scum' you chose to antagonize today. I am not your average MiB agent. I don't place much stock on the rules and laws agents must stick to when handling alien criminals. If you try and attack me, you can be damned sure I'll retaliate in kind and pay you back tenfold, regardless of the laws. You see, Chisenvaal, I've made a bit of a name for myself among Earth's resident alien population. You may have even heard of it. Does the name _Jynnan Tonnyx_ sound familiar at all?"

Haibara frowned slightly. She was pretty sure she was mistaken, but it _sounded_ like he'd said 'gin and tonic', which made no sense because it was one of the few Earth-based (or any) cocktails she actually knew.

Interestingly, the Gorda's response to the word was far more dramatic. The tiny black dots that served as her eyes doubled in size and the gaping maw that was her mouth fell open. It could only be described as an expression of open-mouthed horror. **"Y-YOU'RE…! YOU CAN'T BE…!"**

"I promise you, I very much am, so unless you want to end up like my other victims, I suggest you start talking if you don't want me shatter your core into a thousand fragments," he said in a savage growl and pressed his gun even deeper into the Gorda's stomach, making her cry out.

Haibara jolted forward in alarm with a mind to intervene when Chisenvaal shrieked, **"** _ **NO!**_ **I'LL TALK! I'LL TALK! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!"**

"From where and whom did you get the vacuum-sealed Grade A double-shot plasma rifle?" Gin demanded.

" **TWO MILES INTO THE MOUNTAINS NORTH OF A SMALL TOWN CALLED NANBUSHI ABOUT TWENTY MILES NORTHEAST OF HERE! THE ONE WHO SOLD IT TO ME WAS NAMED Y'KRON, BUT I DON'T KNOW HIS SPECIES. HE HAD A WEAPONS DEPOT DEEP UNDERGROUND, BELOW AN EMPTY CABIN AND THAT'S THE ENTRANCE. I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING MORE THAN THAT, I SWEAR!"**

Despite the loud volume (or maybe because of it), Haibara found she had a very hard time understanding what Chisenvaal had actually said in response to Gin's question. Her skull was still pounding from the booming soundwaves.

Gin must have been satisfied with the answer though, because he nodded slightly. "Your past criminal history with the MiB has mostly involved petty theft and shoplifting, Chisenvaal. Why the sudden interest in high-powered plasma weaponry?"

A terrified expression took over the Gorda's smooth facial features. **"IT'S… IT'S FOR PROTECTION…!"**

Gin looked slightly perplexed, but mostly unimpressed. "Protection from what?"

" **THERE ARE RUMORS GOING AROUND… OF A POWERFUL EXTRATERRESTRIAL ENTITY THAT HAS LIVED IN THE SHADOWS OF THIS PLANET FOR OVER A HUNDRED YEARS, BEING STIRRED FROM ITS SLUMBER AND IS ON THE MOVE."**

"Impossible," Gin said flatly. "Aliens first made contact with humans in America in 1961."

" **IT'S TRUE!"** Chisenvaal protested, **"THIS ENTITY IS RARE, EVEN AMONG ALIENS AND IT WAS HERE LONG BEFORE YOU MEN IN BLACK EVEN EXISTED!"**

From the way his eyes were narrowing into thin slits, Haibara could tell that Gin was quickly losing patience, and she ran forward to intervene before his irritation resulted in a fatal outcome for the wounded alien. "If what you say is true, then does this 'powerful extraterrestrial entity' have a name or some kind of identity?" she asked.

Chisenvaal shook her head slowly. **"ITS PRESENCE IS SECRETIVE, ITS MOTIVE A MYSTERY, ITS NAME UNKNOWN. THERE IS ONLY ONE THING THAT SEEMS TO BE KNOWN FOR CERTAIN, BUT IT WILL NOT HELP YOU FIND IT OR IDENTIFY IT. THEIR KIND WERE BELIEVED TO BE EXTINCT OVER 300 YEARS AGO WHEN THEIR PLANET'S STAR BURNT OUT."**

"Well, what was the name of this alien's species?" Haibara pressed.

" **THEY WERE CALLED 'PANDORA'."**

"Pandora?" Haibara repeated, giving Gin a wondering look. Was this alien telling the truth? And if she was, what were the chances that their species would have a name that also happened to have significance in Ancient Greek mythology?

Gin sniffed in disdain. "Hmph, I've gotten everything I wanted out of her. You can contain her now."

He pulled out his phone and started dialing buttons, so Haibara walked right up to the Gorda and held the containment pod out front with the opening aimed directly at the alien. The yellow light sensor that had illuminated on the back panel when she activated the priming mechanism had since turned green and she pressed the big white rectangular button underneath the number pad. A beam of blue light streamed outward from the interior of the pod. As soon as it touched the Gorda's skin, it spread out like a grid until it covered her whole body and then she disappeared in a flash of light. Turning the containment pod 180 degrees in her hand, Chisenvaal's form was now dehydrated and no bigger than a child's action figure. Haibara quickly sealed the pod shut and punched the locking code into that same number pad on the back panel. The green light changed to red in response. Now nobody but a registered Men in Black agent would know the key to release the culprit.

She lowered her arms and glanced back up at Gin who was still talking on the phone. Judging from his abnormally deferential speech, he was speaking to 'that person'. "… request a plasma containment field and gravity beam available for use as precautionary measures if the Gorda was telling the truth and it turns out there _is_ a plasma weapons depot at the described location… Yes sir, I'll contact you again once I have ascertained the truth of the Gorda's words." He hung up and pocketed his phone. "Let's go, Sherry."

Haibara fell into step beside him and continued to stare up at him, waiting for him to fill her in on what was happening next.

"We're going to investigate that cabin Chisenvaal mentioned. 'That person' is currently arranging for back-up personnel to meet us up there just in case. I also have plasma containment equipment on standby as a worst-case scenario," Gin explained.

"What do you think about what she said at the end? About that Pandora alien?" she asked.

He clicked his tongue in annoyance. "Like I said, the first alien contact with humans was in 1961 in America. Even if there _was_ some alien that had arrived on Earth before that point, the technological advancements we've made since then mean that we would have discovered such a refugee's existence a long time ago and no such alien exists."

Haibara raised an eyebrow and frowned slightly. "You think she was lying then?"

"Not if she honestly believed it and I can't ignore the fact that _something_ has gotten all these aliens stirred up recently if even small fry are buying up illegal plasma weapons left and right," Gin said with a shrug. "A story with such a rare and powerful being like that though? It sounds like nothing more than occult nonsense."

Haibara narrowed her eyes. "Speaking of stirred up aliens…" she said in a low voice. "What was that word you told Chisenvaal?"

One of his green eyes peered down at her from under his bangs. "Hm? What word?"

"The nickname that the alien communities have given you and terrified Chisenvaal senseless as soon as she heard it? It sounded similar to 'gin and tonic', but I don't think I heard right," she elaborated.

His eye widened a fraction and a tick appeared in his cheek. "Ah, that one. It does sound a lot like that cocktail, doesn't it? I'm just surprised you haven't heard my nickname sooner; I've had it for eight years now. The word is _Jynnan Tonnyx_."

"I presume it's not a _good_ nickname."

"Yeah. From what I've gathered, it has a cruel, malicious intonation that doesn't translate well into human language, but it very crudely means 'Silver Bullet'." Haibara was about to ask how he'd earned the name when he preemptively answered her, "It's because among the Men in Black, I'm infamous among the alien criminal world for my merciless nature in snuffing out their existence."

Haibara contemplated this in silence as she observed the man next to her. She supposed it was true and from his enemies' perspectives, he probably more than deserved the name. It was interesting that the best translation for such a word was 'Silver Bullet'. Was there some significance there? Surely there was a more obvious or relevant translation than that? And she also couldn't get her mind off of that Pandora alien that Chisenvaal mentioned. Gin was utterly convinced that it was hogwash, but was that all there was to it? Even he accepted the idea that there might be something big going on that had the lower-class criminals in a panic. Was it really so impossible for an alien to have arrived on Earth before First Contact was officially made, and have escaped MiB detection all this time?

* * *

 _Hm, I guess there was more plot to this chapter than I realized. That makes me feel a bit better at least. I didn't plan on Haibara learning Curacao was Gin's sister and I didn't plan on writing any of the alien stuff._

 _The word 'Jynnan Tonnyx' comes from Douglas Adams' novel "The Last Restaurant at the End of the Universe". I haven't read the book, but I found out about it on the Wikipedia article for the cocktail, gin and tonic. Since it's already an alien word and I thought it looked cool, I decided to use the word here. As for it's translation meaning 'Silver Bullet', that was just me having fun with wordplay. Gin's hair is a silvery ash-blond color and his codename pronounced with a hard 'g' means 'silver' in Japanese. In this way 'Silver Bullet' could be translated as 'Gin's Bullet'._

 _The next chapter starts the 'Clash of Red and Black' set.  
_


	11. Clash of Red and Black

**Author's Note: Alright, back on track with the plot. Considering how long the 'Clash of Red and Black' episodes went on, I'm surprised this chapter has a word count only slightly higher than Vermouth's confrontation with Conan and the FBI.**

* * *

Clash of Red and Black

 _It was not quite dusk when Gin stepped out of the car and shoved his hands into his coat pockets as he made his way to the lopsided hovel of a house so drab and awful-smelling even from this distance that he would have naively wondered if it was intentional if he didn't already know the answer. Long strides carried him to the threshold and he closed his left hand around the grip of the Beretta he'd purposefully moved there for this reason._

" _Rikumichi Kusuda, this is the Men in Black, and don't try pretending you're not home. I know otherwise and I've got an assignment for you and your family," Gin called out into the dark hallow._

 _An amused snicker echoed from within. "My, my, my, if my ears don't deceive me. Look smart and behave my dear children for the infamous_ _**Jynnan Tonnyx** himself has appeared on our doorstep, and it must be important if he's using my legal Earth name instead of my birth name."_

 _What sounded like twenty high-pitched little titters followed these words and from the doorway, stepping into the dimming half-light, was a fairly tall man, still shorter than himself, with overgrown, wild black hair and matching thick black stubble. His nose was long and pointed like an arrow and his eyes, as black as his hair, were wide, but narrow, and inherently shrewd. This was not an individual Gin cared to deal with at all, much less on a semi-regular basis, for reasons that had nothing to do with his unkempt appearance and dilapidated housing preferences. It was difficult not to be prejudiced, but Rikumichi Kusuda and his lot were not the only Cephosanguines he'd had to interact with during his time in the MiB, and he had not yet heard of one that wouldn't go after humans or other aliens if they thought they could get away with it. It disgusted him that his job required he cooperate with literal brain parasites, and confirmed criminals even._

" _Have you come to perhaps offer up your delectable intellect to my humble abode and my offspring?" Kusuda asked with an airy laugh, but with a sinister, hungry look in his eyes that belied the playfulness of his suggestion._

 _Gin gave him a nasty glare. "That human clone is_ _**more** than enough for someone of your wretched nature. Unfortunately, I have need of you and your family's unique abilities for a secret operation."_

 _At the words 'secret operation', Kusuda's gaze became even more intensely predatory and the excited whisperings of his spawn still in the house flowed out of the open doorway. "A secret operation, you say? And who is this person, or group of people rather, that you wish for us to infect and enslave to your will?"_

 _This was another reason he despised working with Cephosanguines. Because he was the fearsome **Jynnan Tonnyx**_ _of the MiB,_ _they borderline-revered him at the same time they constantly tried to undermine him. "Nothing so distasteful as that," he growled. "It's your ability to leave behind a proper corpse and still live to tell of it that I need to use."_

 _Kusuda looked put out at being denied fresh brains, but not completely mutinous. "That's awfully specific of you, your silverness. Isn't it your job to prevent human bodies from turning up due to alien causes?"_

" _It is and I intend to keep it that way, but if the plan goes south, I want to have the option available to kill a human without sacrificing one of my comrades or leaving a body full of missing organs. Capture by the enemy is **not** an option here. A Cephosanguine is the only being capable of pulling it off and escaping alive," Gin said darkly._

" _Alright, you have my interest. What's the nature of this job you would have me do?" Kusuda said with a malevolent gleam in his black eyes._

 _Gin snorted, but withheld any vocalization of further disdain. "You and whichever offspring you choose will infiltrate an assortment of hospitals I wish to have investigated. Only one Cephosanguine will visit each hospital and I want **you** to infiltrate Haido Central Hospital. You may damage your body in any way you see fit to gain admittance as long as it's not permanent, and while you're there, I want you to search the hospital for a woman named Rena Mizunashi. She fell into a coma when she got into a traffic accident and ended up being captured by the FBI."_

" _So you want me and my lot to find this woman for you?" Kusuda asked, his lip curling into a sneer._

 _His green eyes narrowed. "Yes, and I expect every single one of you to provide daily updates on your progress directly to Vodka and anything new or relevant to 'that person'. Do not do anything that might draw the FBI's attention to you. You are to find out which hospital she's located and which room if you can manage that, but nothing more. The Organization will take further steps once we know that much."_

 _Kusuda laughed, "Come on now, Gin, you know what I'm capable of. Such a measly infiltration and information-gathering scheme like this seems hardly worth my talents. Still though…" his voice lowered into a tone of careful, calculated interest. "all this effort for one little woman and giving us direct email contact with your boss? This Rena Mizunashi lady wouldn't happen to be one of your codenamed agents, would she?"_

 _Gin knew that look, but he also knew how to put Kusuda back in his place. He let a teeth-bearing grin widen his lips and brought his gun out of his coat to hold it at chest level. He didn't need to point it at Kusuda for the alien's eyes to widen and his slightly-tanned skin to pale at the sight of it._

" _There is **one** good thing about your kind being obligate parasites, Rikumichi Kusuda," Gin said in a soft, dangerous murmur. "Parasites can't live for long without a host, and if I were to shoot this cloned body the Organization gifted to you, you would be forced to abandon it and face me out here in the open in your weak tentacled slug form. I wouldn't even need to waste a second bullet to snuff out your pathetic, miserable existence."_

" _Now, now, there's no need for that! I was too hasty, of course it doesn't matter who you want me to find!" Kusuda said hurriedly in an attempt at a placating manner, his words tripping over themselves to leave his mouth and stay Gin's hand._

 _Gin's grin widened, turning more feral. "You're right. It doesn't matter to you either way. As for this being a **measly** infiltration, I would rethink those words if I were you. Shuichi Akai has returned to Japan with the rest of his FBI cohort; I'm sure you remember him."_

 _For once, Kusuda's jaw dropped and his eyes widened in unexpected fear. "Shuichi Akai is here?" he repeated._

" _Ah, and you can bet that wherever Rena Mizunashi is, he's guarding her like the ferocious Cerberus standing at the gates of the Underworld," Gin said, internally smirking that he'd wrong-footed Rikumichi Kusuda with news of Akai's presence. "It's for this reason in particular that I'm requesting the assistance of Cephosanguines. I will not allow Shuichi Akai the opportunity to capture another member of the Organization."_

 _Not looking nearly as confident now that he was aware of Shuichi Akai's involvement but trying to hide it, Kusuda said, "Is there a plan to guarantee mine or my children's safety if we find ourselves forced to commit suicide to avoid capture by Shuichi Akai and the FBI? As you said, we are brain parasites and cannot survive long outside of a body without glucose to feed on."_

 _Satisfied that Kusuda had been put back in his place, Gin returned his beloved Beretta to his coat pocket. "Yes, there is a plan. Before you begin your infiltration, you will be given an appropriately-sized homing beacon and a container of emergency glucose reserves. If you are forced to commit suicide, do so and escape the brain at the first opportunity when no one is present, then hide yourself. Once you are hidden, activate the homing beacon and the Organization will send someone to retrieve you. If such drastic measures are required, the Organization will compensate your loss with a new cloned body for you to feed upon."_

 _Kusuda cracked his neck sideways and rolled his shoulders in an effort to loosen them up. "Well, it sounds more interesting than what I've been up to recently. I'll take you up on your offer, Gin, and I enlist as many of my offspring as you need to accomplish your search."_

 _Gin nodded once. "I'll need at least six of them."_

 _Kusuda smirked. "No sooner said than done. When do you want us to begin?"_

 _From his right pocket, Gin pulled out a silver phone and tossed it to Kusuda, who caught it deftly. "The only contacts in that phone are Vodka's phone number and email and 'that person's' email. I will return later with phones for the other six you choose. Once you have those, you can begin at any time once you have injured your bodies appropriately."_

" _I look forward to it, your silverness," Kusuda said with a mocking bow._

 _Gin turned on his heel away from the shabby home, but had walked not more than five paces when he stopped and frowned in thought, his brow creasing his forehead. He slowly glanced back over his shoulder and saw Kusuda still eying him hungrily from the doorway of his own home. "Rikumichi Kusuda, you have a reputation of being quite well-informed of what's going on within the alien populations on Earth and receiving the most recent news of the goings-on in space."_

" _I have been told that many times, yes," Kusuda preened unashamedly. "Are you interested in the recent weapons' deployments to your beloved Earth?"_

 _The problem with Kusuda was that he spoke so vaguely about information, unless you paid the right price for it, that it was difficult to know whether the information was new or outdated. Gin decided not to take the bait and would settle for believing that what Kusuda suggested was in fact, referring to the large gun smuggling operation he had just stopped, and so the information was old news. "Not at all, it's far less concrete than that."_

 _Gin frowned further. Cracked, granite gray skin, a large, frog-like mouth, and a deep, booming voice like shockwaves flitted tauntingly through his memory. '… no such alien exists'._

 _"Do you know anything about an alien called Pandora?"_

 _Kusuda's face contorted so briefly, Gin nearly missed it, but it had looked remarkably like fear. "Well now…" Kusuda said quietly, his expression closed and wary and all feigned playfulness gone. "I'm surprised you know that name."_

 _Gin felt his unease take root in the face of Kusuda's serious response. "So you do know something," he confirmed aloud._

 _"And you're giving it serious consideration," Kusuda retorted in the same manner._

 _"The stories I've heard from the convicted would have me believe this Pandora belongs to a rare and powerful, but otherwise extinct, alien species, that it has lived on Earth for a hundred or so years, and that it has successfully evaded detection by MiB technology," Gin scoffed in disdain._

 _"Yet you're forced to acknowledge that there must be a reason the scum of the underworld are scrambling to obtain powerful plasma weapons, and this is your only lead to discovering why," Kusuda finished, his tone a little smug._

 _Gin scowled, but said nothing.  
_

 _Kusuda smirked and gave a hapless shrug. "Unfortunately, the only information I know is as concrete as your question. There are rumors that abound, of course. There always are, and the rumors say much the same that the stories you've already heard indicate."_

" _I don't put much stock in rumors," Gin said, annoyed that he was wasting his time with this._

" _No, but they can lead to some very interesting questions, I'd say," Kusuda said. "For example, there's one rumor I've heard that Pandora takes the form of a mermaid and whose flesh, once consumed, will grant immortality. There's another that says Pandora is a blood red gem residing dormant within one of the Big Jewels of the Earth. If this Big Jewel is held up to the moonlight when the Volley's Comet passes by the Earth, it will cry and those tears will grant immortality to the one who drinks them."_

" _Bullshit. Immortality is the foolishly-sought out pipe dream of mankind. It doesn't exist." If there was one thing that compromised his patient nature like no other, it was tales of the mythical and fantastic._

" _So you don't find it curious that both these stories of Pandora, a supposedly ancient and long-lived species, possess the common thread of granting immortality?" Kusuda asked with a scathing sneer. "For someone as brilliant and intuitive as you, you're incredibly narrow-minded."_

" _I don't have to listen to this," Gin snarled and made to return to his car when Kusuda called out to him._

" _Then I guess it wouldn't interest you to hear that there's a rumor Pandora has infiltrated into the highest levels of your precious Organization?"_

 _Gin stilled then snapped his head back over his shoulder with a steely glint in his green eyes. "That's impossible. No alien can infiltrate the Men in Black without our knowing about it."_

 _Kusuda's quiet snickers devolved into full-out laughter. "You really do think too simply sometimes, Gin, and your confidence is astounding! But ask yourself this: can your Organization look at two completely normal-looking, normal-response, healthy human cells and discern which one belongs to an alien?"_

 _Gin continued to stare furiously at Kusuda. He was just messing with him, trying to sow the seeds of fear and doubt in his heart, but he would not let them take root. He knew the workings of the Organization inside and out and there was no way, no possible **fucking** way that such an alien existed, much less secretly infiltrated the Organization._

 _Though neither of the two men spoke as they stared at each other, the very air around them seemed to echo dully. It steadily grew louder and clearer and Gin found it sounded familiar even. It seemed to be speaking only one word. Just one word that kept repeating over and over. Eventually, he was able to make out what the voice was saying: Aniki._

" _Aniki… Aniki…"_

 _It was definitely Vodka's voice, but that made no sense. He hadn't brought Vodka with him, didn't see him anywhere, and his voice shouldn't be able to project from everywhere like this anyway._

" _Aniki…!"_

 _Vodka's voice was more insistent this time, and a little annoyed. Inexplicably, Gin felt a sudden heaviness settle in his bones and a lurch in his head. He felt groggy and stupid and when his eyes closed, everything around him seemed to disappear entirely._

When he opened them again, his vision was blurred, but he had no trouble making out Vodka's blunt, square-faced features staring at him.

Vodka smiled and retreated backward a bit. "There you are. I didn't think you would be so difficult to wake up. I half-expected you to attack me as soon as I touched your shoulder, but when you didn't respond, then I worried that I would have to resort to something a bit more drastic. You were out like a light."

Gin blinked his eyes slowly, hearing the words Vodka was saying, but his sluggish brain only comprehending half the words. He looked ahead and found bright afternoon sunlight glaring through the windshield of his car with pedestrians walking past Vodka's side along the sidewalk.

"I was asleep?" he blurted out and then instantly wished to take it back. It was perhaps the stupidest thing he'd ever said in his life while sober.

Luckily, Vodka decided not to poke fun at him for it. "Yeah, for a good thirty minutes or so at the very least. I think that's the first time you've ever fallen asleep on me while we've been driving on our way to an assignment. Are you feeling okay?"

Gin exhaled heavily and covered his eyes with his hand, massaging his forehead. "I haven't been sleeping well lately, but I didn't think it was so bad that I would end up taking a nap in the car like a little kid," he grumbled. "Vodka, remind me what day it is."

"Uh, Thursday, January 12th," Vodka said.

"I see…" Gin murmured, remembering his dream, the _memory_ of what had occurred in mid-December. Rikumichi Kusuda had infiltrated Haido Central Hospital on December 19th shortly after that meeting and it had been twenty-four days since then. "Anything new about the search for Kir?"

Vodka shook his head. "No, none of the seven hospitals we're investigating have turned up anything interesting yet, but no homing beacons have been activated either, so the FBI's not onto us."

Gin gave a solemn nod. "I almost _want_ the FBI to find them because then we'll know for sure which hospital Kir is being hidden in, but that's just not how we work."

"Nothing to do but wait, huh Aniki?"

"I'm tired of waiting all the time," Gin muttered to himself and pushed the memory of Kusuda and Pandora out of his head as he got out of the car to carry out his work for the day.

()()()()()

Haibara was convinced that the adults that came in contact with Conan on a semi-regular basis subconsciously ignored the fact that the person they were talking to was in fact a seven-year-old child. They seemed to forget that normal seven-year-old children were still learning how to read, write, form complex sentences, add, subtract, politely ask for things, and learn how caterpillars became butterflies. That was the only explanation she had for how and why even such smart, investigative people as Jodie Starling didn't question _how_ a seven-year-old had the brain capacity to be able to reason with adults coherently.

Sometimes she half-heartedly hoped that one of these days Kudo would have a run-in with a psychologist or someone who specialized in child development, and they would make him sweat bullets when they pointed out, without a doubt, that his mental aptitude was not merely _advanced_ for a child of his age, but _impossible_.

This was one of those times, while she was standing next to Dr. Agasa and Conan was having an impromptu meeting with Jodie Starling at their house about Eisuke Hondou's sudden appearance and subsequent disappearance at Haido Central Hospital where Kir was being held by the FBI.

"Um, what is this 'Company' you're talking about?" Dr. Agasa asked. "From listening to you, I gather that it's not the usual sort of company."

Since Kudo and the FBI had already taken the information this far and knew exactly who they were dealing with, there was no point in continuing to leave Dr. Agasa in the dark about this. "Just as the FBI is known as a 'Bureau', _they_ are known as a 'Company'," she answered vaguely. "They gather intelligence in support of the policies of the United States and they are the intelligence service that carries out foreign activities under the direct control of the president."

"By that, you mean…?"

Haibara looked up and met his confused gaze with a blank stare. "The CIA."

"T-The CIA?" Agasa repeated.

"Yes. In other words, Eisuke's father is an American spy." She directed her blank expression to Jodie. "Isn't that what you meant?"

"Yeah, but that's just one possibility," Conan started to say.

"No, there's no doubt," Jodie retorted at once and Conan looked up at her in surprise.

Haibara wasn't surprised at all to hear Jodie's retelling of how she had confirmed the identity of Eisuke's father, Ethan Hondou, as a CIA agent. He had been the original CIA liaison for the Men in Black in Japan and in the process of training his daughter, Hidemi Hondou alias Rena Mizunashi, to take his place when he had been caught, killed, and replaced, and his alien replacement had gone after the man's daughter. She'd managed to turn the tables against her captor on her own, but was in a pitiful state when Gin found her. Gin had been very worried about the newly-christened Kir's mental state because of the torture inflicted on her by one who looked like her father and because she had never killed anyone before that moment. Haibara was ashamed to admit that her fourteen-year-old self, who had only recently started dating Gin at the time, had been more preoccupied with being jealous at how much time Gin was spending with Kir rather than the amount of trauma the woman had endured.

"But isn't it strange?" Haibara said, inserting herself back into the conversation. "If that Eisuke kid is looking for Rena Mizunashi because she underwent plastic surgery to look like his sister, then shouldn't the CIA have stopped him?"

She didn't know where that Eisuke fellow had disappeared to, but if she could persuade Kudo to believe he'd joined up with one of his father's CIA colleagues, it might distract him long enough to prevent him from gaining any good traction on this case.

"That's true. Since the Organization is pursuing her whereabouts as well, he would be in danger if they noticed him," Agasa agreed. "He could also inadvertently hinder the CIA's operation as well. Moreover, if he's really their operative's son, there'd be no reason _not_ to stop him."

"No, they probably _did_ stop him from meeting Rena Mizunashi," Conan said. "He said he saw a colleague of his father's at Haido Central before winter break which was right before we lost contact with him.

Haibara could hardly believe her ears. Oh stars, please let this distraction work!

"Then the CIA stopped him?" Agasa asked.

"Yeah, they're probably protecting him now as they were requested to by his father," Conan said with a slight smile and Haibara felt her heart sink with a silent groan.

If Jodie had been thorough in her investigation, then she already knew that wasn't possible because Ethan Hondou had been dead for four years. Sure enough, she revealed just that and Haibara pretended to stare at her in wide-eyed shock like the other two.

"It was an abandoned warehouse in Yokohama. The eyewitness was a homeless man sleeping on the second floor," Jodie began and Haibara found her eyes widen even further as her pretend shock became real when she realized that Jodie was going to recount the day Hidemi murdered the alien who had replaced her father.

Gin had burned down that warehouse. There shouldn't have been any witnesses.

"After being awoken by a gunshot, he looked to the bottom floor and saw a woman crouching near the collapsed body of a man when two other men entered. Both were wearing black; one was tall with long hair and the other had a solid build and was wearing sunglasses."

A quick glance at Conan's expression, and she could read the anger boiling off him in the squint of his eyes and the grit of his teeth as he recognized the descriptions of the two men he hated most in the world.

"The kneeling woman explained to the two men in a feeble tone: 'I bit into his wrist, grabbed his gun, and shot him to death.' Then she said 'I didn't say anything. Listen to the MD the dead man is carrying and you'll know.' After a while, another man appeared. He rushed over and began calling out 'Hondou! Hondou! Hondou!'"

Haibara knew that what she was hearing was only the last quarter of the story and yet, even these details were unknown to her. Nobody had meant to keep her ignorant of what happened to Kir. She just hadn't wanted to hear about it, and then afterwards, she had completely forgotten about it.

"Then the man who rushed over was with the CIA also?" Agasa asked. His expression was troubled.

"But if he just called out his last name, how do you know it was really Ethan Hondou?" Conan pointed out.

"I showed him the picture of Eisuke's father that you sent me. When I showed it to him for confirmation, he said it was certain," Jodie answered.

"He?" Conan asked, and she was glad he had because she would have otherwise. For having taught high school English for a time, she had completely forgotten to identify the new noun before switching to a pronoun.

"Akai," she said, and Haibara's brow furrowed in concern for the briefest of seconds upon hearing the name. "He found conclusive evidence that Ethan Hondou was a CIA operative. I'm not sure how he got it, but his evidence has never proven wrong, not even once."

The only question Haibara had about that was if he had found this 'conclusive evidence' during or after his time in the Organization. Ethan Hondou had been with the Men in Black for twenty-two years (and five of those spent working as the highest rank a person could go before being codenamed) before Akai joined and then Ethan Hondou died a year later. If Akai had found such evidence after so short a length of time about a man who had been with the Organization as long as he had, then what other secrets had Akai managed to uncover while he had been with them?

"But I doubt _they_ would leave a witness alive, much less two," Haibara quipped, wanting to direct the conversation from Akai as quickly as possible.

"Luckily they didn't realize the homeless man was there, but they did kill the man who rushed to the body from where they were hiding," Jodie continued.

That or the other fake CIA agent had committed suicide when he saw who was there waiting for him. Both were equally likely to Haibara.

"They burned down the warehouse as well. They must have expected anyone alive to go down with it, just like with me. Aside from that, the kneeling woman proved even more surprising. That homeless man, though he was scared to do so, finally responded: 'That kneeling woman there was the spitting image of that announcer, Rena Mizunashi."

"Then that means…" Dr. Agasa began.

"As we thought, Rena Mizunashi's not…" Conan trailed off.

"Yeah, it would seem she's not that Eisuke kid's sister," Jodie finished. "If she were, that would mean the daughter shot and killed her own father."

And that was apparently an impossible concept to them, but she wasn't going to let this opportunity pass up. "Thinking about it, she must have impersonated Ethan Hondou's daughter in order to get close to him. She was probably sounding out how much the CIA understood of the situation, but was found out and captured. I suppose that before he could make her talk, she fought back."

It was a reasonable conjecture and yet Conan still had that stiff expression that meant he was not convinced and would continue information-hunting until he'd reached a conclusion he was satisfied with. It frustrated her to no end.

Jodie huffed in exasperation. "I guess I'm stuck now. I was going to ask Eisuke for more details about his father and thought you could call him here, but now we can't contact him."

"At any rate, let's head over to Haido Central Hospital," Conan suggested.

"Eh, you too?"

"Yup! Since CIA members may be hiding there, I could prove useful since they don't know my face, right?" he said with a false, cutesy smile to Jodie that never failed to annoy Haibara.

It was like that smile turned on some magic charm to make people completely forget that he was a seven-year-old talking the way no seven-year-old should, even if he _had_ been 'trained by Shinichi Kudo'. Perhaps what annoyed Haibara the most about it was that it seemed to work _every single freaking time_. She managed to hide her annoyance behind a cool mask of indifference as she walked the FBI agent and the shrunken detective walk out the front door and then promptly turned on her heel to head down the stairs.

"I'll be working in the basement for a while, so don't come down and bother me," she told Agasa by way of explanation before he could ask.

No sooner had she grabbed the phone off the desk did she flip it open and quickly dial a set of numbers before holding it to her ear and listening to the other end ring.

" _Sherry? It's me, what do you need?"_ Gin answered, sounding startled.

Haibara frowned slightly. "Is this a bad time?"

" _No, it's fine. I'm just a little out of it today,"_ Gin sighed.

" _He fell asleep in the car on the way to an assignment,"_ Vodka's voice snickered in the background.

" _Vodka, shut up!"_ Gin snapped, sounding both furious and mortified.

Despite Gin's embarrassment, it worried her to hear that. "It's not like you to fall asleep in the car like that. You're not coming down with something are you?"

" _No, Sherry, as I already told Vodka, I just haven't been sleeping well lately and I guess it finally caught up with me in the car,"_ Gin grumbled. _"So, why are you calling?"_

Haibara shrugged and crossed one of her arms. "I figured I'd better inform you of what Kudo knows now before you're blindsided later. He knows about Ethan Hondou."

" _Ethan Hondou! How?! What does he know?"_ Gin demanded.

Haibara sniffed disdainfully. "Too much. He knows that Hondou was a CIA agent infiltrating the Black Organization and knows the circumstances surrounding his death four years ago, that he was killed by a woman who looked like Rena Mizunashi. Apparently there was a homeless person who witnessed everything from the moment of your arrival. The FBI knows all of this information now too."

" _Sherry, this is…"_ Gin trailed off, sounding uncharacteristically worried for once.

"Kir's little brother, Eisuke, has been snooping around looking for Rena Mizunashi as well, but with a picture of his big sister from when she was younger. The only reason Kudo can't accept that Rena Mizunashi and Hidemi Hondou are the same person is because Hidemi apparently gave her brother a blood transfusion when he was little and he's Type O, while Rena Mizunashi is Type AB." She exhaled heavily through her nose and continued, "As it stands right now, he believes Kir underwent plastic surgery to look like Ethan Hondou's daughter in order to get close to him and discover how much the CIA knew about the Black Organization before killing him, but he's not convinced by that explanation. The idea of Kir working for the CIA has not yet crossed his mind, but it may if he can find a way around the blood type problem with Eisuke and Rena and can prove that Rena and Hidemi are one and the same."

" _Thank you, Sherry. I know it's not easy for you to just stand there listening to them uncover the Organization's secrets like that, but I appreciate you keeping me informed of where he stands with us,"_ Gin said.

Haibara half-smiled. "And how's the search for Kir coming along?"

" _Still looking. I've sent spies into seven likely hospitals she may have been placed in, but there's been no news yet,"_ he said with a tired sigh.

Three words. That's all it would take for her to ease some of his burden. He wouldn't be able to stop her and he would be angry at her for revealing the location, but he wouldn't be able to pretend he hadn't heard her and he would still act on the information. Haibara grimaced and bit her lip. If she did that, then she would be found out as the traitor who gave away Kir's location to the Black Organization and Kudo would never trust her again. She needed that trust, not just because he often shared what he'd learned of the Organization with her, but because he was her friend, for better or worse.

"I hope you find her soon," she offered quietly.

" _Yeah… me too… Please let me know if you hear anything new on your end, Sherry."_

She smiled faintly. "I will. I love you, Gin."

A slight chuckle escaped him. _"I'm not saying 'I love you too' back."_

Her grin widened. "And yet, I believe you just did."

He laughed for real this time. _"Thank you, Sherry."_

Even after he hung up and she could no longer hear his voice in her ear, she still held the phone against her chest, closed her eyes, and sighed happily, his real laugh echoing in her head.

()()()()()

When Vodka first heard the quiet, but insistent beeping noise while he was filling the gas tank, he thought he was going insane until he realized it was coming from his phone. Curious and more than a little concerned, he pulled it out of his pocket and flipped it open. His eyebrows shot up to his hairline immediately as soon as the screen lit up and he understood perfectly why it was making that sound now.

One of the seven homing beacons had been set off, the one for Rikumichi Kusuda stationed at Haido Central Hospital. He'd already received the daily report from the seven Cephosanguines, so what could have happened already at this time of night to cause this? Vodka noticed there was a picture attached and he opened the file, but it was only a picture of the list of patients and their rooms taken at the nurse's station and a quick scan told him that Rena Mizunashi's name was not on there. If the picture was some kind of code meant to hint where she was, then he was clueless and would have to have Gin take a look at it.

Speaking of which… Vodka looked up from his phone at the back of his partner's head from where he was sitting in the passenger's seat. In truth, he was worried about him. Gin wasn't complaining and _wouldn't_ say anything, but Vodka had been working with him for seven years and he could tell that the taller man was exhausted and drained, today's car nap being undeniable proof of that. Although Gin and Kir disagreed on many things, they had always gotten along well and Gin had been merciless towards himself for not having arrived to save Hidemi from her captor sooner. As ridiculous as it was, some part of him blamed himself for letting her get captured at all. He wondered if Gin blamed himself for letting her get captured this time too and that was why he was running himself into the ground trying to find her. Gin took his responsibility for his subordinates very seriously.

Vodka glanced down at his phone still showing the active homing beacon for Haido Central Hospital on the screen. This was the information Gin had been patiently waiting nearly a month for. His first instinct was to poke his head back into the car and tell him immediately, but what if he was wrong? What if the homing beacon was activated for some reason _other_ than escaping capture by the FBI and Kir wasn't at Haido Central Hospital? It would waste invaluable time on a fruitless endeavor. It would be better to scope out the situation first before reporting his findings to Gin.

With his mind made up, Vodka dialed a few numbers on the keypad and waited for the call to go through. "Hatsuo, it's me. I got a buzz just now on the homing beacon for our guy at the Haido Central Hospital. I need you to send one of yours to go pick him up. Have them bring extra glucose reserves just in case. After that, I need you to send him over to Haido Central Hospital to scout out the situation. If it's the FBI, they'll be expecting us soon and they'll be swarming to reinforce their numbers in preparation. If your guy gives you the go ahead, report it back to me and send out the rest of your subordinates to the hospital as sniper cover." He smirked slightly. "No sense letting the FBI think they can sneak Rena Mizunashi out of the hospital without giving us the chance to retaliate properly. If you need extra personnel, you have my permission to enlist any other squad leaders of your rank or lower for this mission."

Vodka received an affirmative from the squad leader and hung up, sticking the phone back in his pocket. Belatedly, he realized the gas nozzle had already finished filling up the tank and he fumbled it back into its holder. Once he paid for the gas, he opened the door and slid back into the driver's seat.

"You sure took your time," Gin said quietly. His voice was carefully expressionless and his bangs were hiding his eyes again so Vodka couldn't easily tell how Gin was feeling.

"Ah, well, I was a bit distracted-"

"-Who were you talking with on the phone just now?" Gin cut him off sharply.

Vodka stiffened and glanced away quickly, not that it would do him any good. Some might consider it a virtue, but to him, his emotional honesty was a terrible fault he had _never_ been able to overcome. "Err, I was… who I was talking with, that is to say… I mean, it wasn't anyone important."

He didn't look at his partner, but he knew without doing so that Gin had shifted his head just enough to glance at him out of the corner of his eyes and was slowly raising one of his ash-blond eyebrows in open disbelief. "Ohh?" he hummed.

"Y-Yeah," Vodka stammered, still not meeting his partner's gaze.

A tense silence settled between them as Gin stared at Vodka, and Vodka fidgeted nervously under the scrutiny. At last, Gin huffed and a puff of cigarette smoke escaped his lips in the process. "If you say so." He resettled himself against the seat and tipped his hat forward slightly.

For his part, Vodka was shocked that Gin had let him get away with such an obvious, bold-faced lie without any repercussions, but he didn't wish to press his luck. He turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of the gas station back onto the main road. Once he got the call from Hatsuo, then he would have a better understanding of the situation and could tell Gin accordingly. For Gin's sake, Vodka hoped that Hatsuo would be calling with good news.

()()()()()

The plan had been ready to be put into action from the very moment Gin had first sent the seven Cephosanguines undercover into the hospitals. He had only been waiting to hear which location Operation: Smoke Out required his efforts be directed towards. Everything after that was all a matter of timing.

"Good news, Aniki, our present for James Black from Rikumichi Kusuda is on its way," Vodka said as soon as he got off the phone.

Gin smirked. "Excellent. Call Nima again in fifteen minutes to have them drop off the rest of our gifts for the FBI." With those directions spoken, he pulled out his own phone and made three separate calls, saying the same thing each time: "It's me. Do it."

He hung up after the third call and leaned back in his seat, his heart pumping with anticipation. Nothing would be obvious so soon after his calls, but within a short ten minutes, James Black would receive the purple columbine flowers and Haido Central Hospital would be flooded with the innocent victims of a fire, a gaseous irritant, and the symptoms of food poisoning. The FBI wouldn't be able to perform security checks on such vast numbers of people before they burst into the hospital lobby. Just imagining their inevitable panic and confusion along with their growing fear as they desperately fought against a steadily worsening situation brought him a sense of vicious pleasure.

His phone rang this time and he answered with only a brief glance at the number. "Yeah, it's me."

Chianti's voice answered him. _"Korn and I have arrived in the area."_

'That makes two of you,' he thought bitterly. Vermouth still hadn't checked in yet. "Alright, meet me on Samoju Street just past the intersection at Karana Boulevard after the bookstore and I'll fill you in on the details and give you some important equipment."

" _Roger that,"_ Chianti said and hung up.

"Chianti and Korn will be here soon," Gin explained to Vodka.

"Still no word from Vermouth, huh?"

Gin's eyes narrowed. "No. She's still got time though…"

It wasn't much later that two black motorcycles pulled up alongside the Porsche and Gin and Vodka got out of the car to greet the two snipers.

"Alright, Gin, we're here, so what's the plan?" Chianti asked as she took off her helmet. Korn left his on.

Gin walked around to the back of the car, the other three following him, and opened up the trunk from which he removed three objects that looked like guns except that they had cylindrical barrels. He passed these to Vodka, Chianti, and Korn.

"These are infrared imaging scanners," he explained. "In a little over thirty minutes from now, the FBI will feel pressured to flee the hospital with Kir in tow, but they'll try and disguise which vehicle they're using to locate her. I expect they won't use more than three vans, so each of you will be assigned to follow one. You aim the barrel of the IIS at the front end of the van where you wish to scan and pull the trigger to begin. Make sure you hold it straight without turning it as you scan towards the back end of the van and release the trigger when you're done. You will see a preview of the image you just captured and you will forward it to me by pressing the red button at the top of the grip. I suggest you practice using them and familiarizing yourself with the area before getting into position."

Chianti examined it with curiosity. "Sounds interesting, so where _are_ we going to position ourselves?"

"I want you on the rooftop observing the hospital's parking garage. Your job will be to count how many vans they're using to hide their transportation of Kir. If they use more than three, I'll have to come up with a new plan to account for the discrepancy."

"Roger," she said with a nod.

Gin looked to Korn standing next to her. "I want you groundside along the parking garage entrance's street. You'll be in a good position to follow your van quickly."

"Understood."

"Vodka, you'll wait with me near the hospital until the FBI makes its move," Gin said.

Vodka smiled slightly and nodded. "Copy that."

"So, Gin, what's this brilliant plan you've got that makes you so certain the FBI will try to move Kir after thirty minutes?" Chianti asked.

Gin chuckled darkly. "Just a steady series of unfortunate events designed to cloud their judgment and slowly strangle them with a noose of their own making. They'll reveal the location of Kir's room and then happily bring her to us of their own accord."

He knew he was being uncharacteristically blood-thirsty towards other humans, but he could hardly bring himself to care. He was having too much fun shoving that irksome organization's nose to the metaphorical grindstone. The distant sound of a fire truck alarm drew his focus back to the outside world and he smirked to himself. It was almost time.

"Vodka, go ahead and call Nima and have him send the rest of our gifts," he said.

"Yes, Aniki," Vodka replied and called the squad leader back to relay the instructions.

While Vodka was doing that, Gin turned back to the two snipers. "I suggest you stay off the main roads leading to the hospital while you're scoping the area if you can. There's about to be a lot of heavy traffic in that direction."

"Oi, oi, what did you do?" Chianti demanded.

"Nothing too life-threatening if that's what you're worried about," he said with a relaxed shrug. "I merely arranged for three incidents to incapacitate large numbers of people severely enough for them to come to this hospital and overwhelm the already high-strung FBI agents sitting in their trenches waiting for our attack from across No Man's Land."

"You're one sick son of a bitch," Chianti muttered.

Gin let her insult slide off him like water. He was used to her rude mouth. "Just make sure that you're at your assigned position in thirty minutes and inform me over your radios when you've arrived."

"Yeah, yeah, I hear ya," Chianti griped and started walking back to her motorcycle. Korn silently followed after her to his.

Vodka had just finished his phone call. "The rest of the bombs are being sent now," he said.

"Good, so far everything is running smoothly. Right now, I need to keep an eye on the transmitter of the first bomb we sent and then the others so I know when they arrive at the hospital and can choose the proper time to stream the edited video of Kir."

"Do you really think Akai will be the one to take the first bomb away from the hospital?"

Gin frowned. "I'm hoping so. He's that kind of person and the FBI views him as their trump card against us, so he will most likely be either with his boss who holds the potted bomb or in close contact with him. He will know immediately when the bomb's ticking becomes loud enough to hear. There's a garbage dump seven kilometers away from the hospital that they can take it to. The more than thirty minutes available on the timer will be enough to get it there in time. However, it will be too far away to have returned to the hospital in time to witness the video streaming of Kir and prevent his colleagues from going to her room to check if she really is still unconscious."

"And if Akai _isn't_ the one to take the first bomb away?"

"Then I'll just have to hope that he figures out the bombs' true purpose too late to stop his colleagues from reaching Kir's room," Gin sighed.

()()()()()

" _One… two… three… Three vans, just like you said, Gin,"_ Chianti informed him over the radio.

"Good." He loved being right. "Chianti, you follow the first van and Korn, you're on the second one. Once you catch up with your target, scan the interior and I'll decide which one is the correct van," Gin said. He got two affirmatives and glanced over at his partner putting on his helmet. "Vodka, you're going after the third one."

"Gotcha. Hey, did Vermouth or our informant in the hospital ever get back to you?"

Gin scowled. "No, I haven't heard from either of them. Well, according to 'that person', the informant is only there for insurance, but I never intended to rely on that plan anyway. As for Vermouth, we can still pull this off without her and _she'll_ be the one to explain to 'that person' why she wasn't here."

Vodka nodded absent-mindedly and drove out from under the overpass where Gin had parked his car.

Despite having to descend from the roof of a tall building first, Chianti was still the first to reach her target.

" _Gin, I'm at the first vehicle."_

"How does it look?" he asked.

" _I can't see anything with the side windows tinted,"_ she said with a huff.

Gin had expected as much. It would be stupid of the FBI not to try and hide their cargo, but it was a useless gesture. "Strip it down."

" _Roger… Photography complete, forwarding now."_

He shifted his attention from the radio in his hands to the open laptop sitting on his thighs as a new window opened on the screen and the picture loaded from left to right. "The thermograph shows nine bodies and I can see our bomb transmitters on nearly all of them."

" _You see it, right? There's one lying down on the back seat. Isn't that Rena Mizunashi? It's the only one that doesn't have a transmitter."_

Gin gave a noncommittal hum in the back of his throat. He needed to see what the other two looked like first, but he strongly doubted the FBI- no, that Shuichi Akai would have let the FBI place Kir in the van in such an obvious way.

" _Mine's taken. Forwarding it now,"_ Korn said, and a second window with a second thermograph appeared on the screen.

"I'm seeing nine bodies in the second van, but with no transmitters," he informed them.

" _Mine's done as well,"_ Vodka said and the last thermograph loaded onto the screen.

It was obvious at a quick glance that Vodka's van was different from the other two. "I'm seeing two bodies in the third van and both of them have transmitters."

The presence of the transmitters on the various members in the three vans had no doubt been Shuichi Akai's last-minute suggestion to add a distracting factor and throw another layer of deception over which van contained their captured comrade. Kir was unconscious, so it would make sense for her to be in one of the first two vans. And yet, his eyes kept being drawn back to the thermograph of the third…

" _Hurry up, Gin! Following them for so long is making me want to take my rifle and shoot out the tires,"_ Chianti complained.

" _Well, it seems like there's no reason to follow mine,"_ Vodka said. _"With the transmitters and heat signatures, we've only got two FBI agents here. Besides, if this keeps up, we'll end up right back at the hospital. It'd be a perfect decoy, right?"_

'A perfect decoy, huh?' Gin wondered when another woman's voice interrupted his musings over the radio.

" _Sorry for the wait, Gin. I've finally found it: Shuichi Akai's Chevrolet."_

Was that what that irksome woman had been up to this whole time? "You're late, Vermouth. 'That person' directly ordered you to do this, right?"

As much as it irritated him, as long as 'that person' was aware of her movements and she wasn't acting out on her own again, he didn't have any reason to harass her for leaving him in the dark about her whereabouts.

" _You'll have to forgive me,"_ Vermouth said with a playful edge. _"He expected this and parked a kilometer away."_

That sounded like Akai. "And? Where is he?"

" _We just left Haido Park and entered Beika city limits,"_ Vermouth said. _"The closest van to him is Korn's."_

Gin pressed a few keys on the laptop and shifted from the thermograph displays to a map of the streets with four moving purple triangles, the vehicle tags for the four motorcycles they were using in this operation. He focused on the two that were moving in the same direction. One of them was Korn, the other was Vermouth, and in-between them unmarked was Akai.

"So he's about 200 meters back?" he guessed based on the relative positions of the two moving triangles on the screen.

" _Then isn't our target Korn's car since that guy is following it?"_ Chianti demanded angrily.

Before Gin could give any further orders for their plan of attack, Vermouth's voice came back on the radio, _"Amazing, he's actually speeding up! He'll catch the second van in less than a minute. He must have noticed Korn has marked it."_

" _So it's the second one!"_ Chianti said decisively. _"I'll change course and join Korn in pursuit!"_

No, that was a feint.

" _Then I'll head for Korn's car as well,"_ Vodka said, _"Following bait like this won't help at all."_

He was even more certain than before.

" _If he comes, I'll fire."_

"Hold it, Korn. Take a side road and change course," Gin ordered.

His words were predictably met with Chianti's outrage. _"What now?! Are you giving up and running from Akai?!"_

"No, what we should be following is the third van Vodka's tailing. _That's_ where Kir is," he said, a victorious smirk twerking the corner of his lips.

" _Eh? Why?"_ Vermouth asked in surprise.

"Akai believes we're part of a secret criminal organization. He isn't going to screw up and draw our attention to the car he's escorting by pulling out in such an obvious way. He's luring us into a trap," he said.

" _A trap, huh?"_ Vermouth repeated.

" _But Aniki, the back seat of the van I'm on is empty and only has two FBI guys in the front,"_ Vodka pointed out.

"Hmph, while the driver is probably with the FBI, the one sitting in the passenger seat must be Kir. They expected us to assume the unconscious Kir would be placed on a stretcher in the back of the van, so they put a transmitter on her and put her in the passenger seat to make her look like an FBI agent," Gin explained.

" _But isn't the third van going back to the hospital?"_ Chianti asked, sounding annoyed.

"That's another decisive clue," he agreed, refocusing the map on Vodka's position and observing his direction. "Even though they realized we had found out Kir was in that hospital, the FBI hadn't moved her because they had nowhere else to take her in this situation." His smirk widened and he closed the laptop, tossing it off to the side. "Basically, they're making it seem like they're moving her when they're brazenly returning to the same hospital, thinking we wouldn't check it a second time. So, everyone regroup at Vodka's position."

" _Okay, Vodka, where are you!?"_ Chianti shouted.

" _I'm at-"_

While Vodka was busy communicating his position to the others over the radio, Gin turned the engine over and drove out from under the overpass onto the main road. Since the van was returning back to the hospital, it didn't take long for him to reach the van and for the others to join him. It was an impressive escort: one vintage Porsche and four motorcycles following behind a single navy-blue van. It definitely sent a strong, clear message: We've figured you out. Gin was curious how the driver would respond to this statement. He was outnumbered, outvehicled, and outgunned. The FBI driver only had two things on his side: Kir, and the fact that they didn't actually want to kill him.

The driver's first response to their presence left Gin feeling both baffled and suspicious. The driver increased his speed, but then shifted over from the fast lane into the slow left lane. They were approaching a long stretch of riverbank on the left; was that intentional or was the timing just coincidence? Then out of nowhere, the van started fish-tailing wildly, its brakes screaming. Gin hastily backed off and watched the careening car with apprehension from a further distance. It wavered and spun so far to the left that its right front end crashed into the outer barrier with a metallic _crunch_ where the road was starting to swing right. It skidded that way for several meters, metal screeching against metal, until the front right wheel finally caught on the end of the barrier and jerked the van to a full-stop.

Gin and the others stopped just before the scene of the accident. He got out of the car and was just starting to wonder if he (ironically) needed to call for one of the Organization's medical teams when the passenger door opened and a conscious, very-much-awake Kir tumbled to the ground, smiling gratefully up at them.

"Kir…!" Chianti gasped, voicing the shock and confusion that everyone was feeling as she staggered forward, holding her right arm in pain.

"What's the meaning of this? Why did the van stop?" he demanded, because as glad as he was to see her alive, and awake even, the circumstances by which this reunion had been allowed were a little too convenient for his liking.

"I heard on that FBI agent's radio that you were coming to rescue me. I saw my chance and hit him with the bomb case they gave me, then pulled the hand brake," Kir said, glancing back at the unconscious driver.

"Then, even though the FBI had you hospitalized, you were conscious?" Vermouth asked with a note of skepticism.

"Yeah. I only came to two or three days ago, but the FBI thought I was in a coma the whole time."

"I guess that means we've recovered Kir safely without getting caught, huh Aniki?" Vodka said in faint relief.

"Yeah…" Gin muttered distractedly. There was something about the way Kir was speaking that made him think there was more to this than she was letting on. Not taking his eyes off her, he said, "They left such an important task to just one man. Let's dispose of this foolish FBI agent."

She gave him the slightest of nods.

Withholding a frustrated sigh, he turned to face the others, put a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture and jerked his head back at the apparently _not_ -unconscious FBI driver. Everyone stiffened in mild alarm with the news, but none of them said a word to let on otherwise. Gin silently pointed at Chianti and Korn, and Korn immediately pointed at Chianti. Chianti rolled her eyes, but pulled out her sniper rifle anyway.

"Do it, Chianti," he ordered as she steadied her weapon and took aim. He wasn't sure what Kir was expecting to happen, only that she knew the driver would be able to get away from them without suspicion and he decided to trust this secret plan of hers.

"Roger that," she said and then giggled to herself. "If you must blame someone, blame your FBI partners who came up with this stupid strat-"

Her words were interrupted by a flash of light and an explosion that rent the air and completely consumed the van in fierce orange flames and black smoke.

"An explosion?" Vodka said, his tone both confused and horrified as he stared at the wreckage. The flames were so thick they couldn't have even begun to determine if there was a body still inside.

"Don't tell me that guy left a live bomb in his pocket!" Chianti exclaimed, looking dumbstruck.

"Could the fuse have been triggered by the force of the car crash?" Kir suggested, sounding remarkably calm for having just witnessed someone being blown to smithereens.

Well, Gin couldn't argue that death by explosion was about as non-suspicious as you could get under ordinary circumstances. Unfortunately, the flaming vehicle was drawing a lot of attention from passersby stopping to do what ordinary civilians typically do and call for a police or ambulance.

"Lots of curious onlookers," Vodka muttered under his breath.

"Kir, you're in my car. Let's move out," he ordered.

Everyone jumped to obey and they sped out of there away from the scene of the accident.

Once they were safely out of the danger zone, Gin got back on the radio. "Alright, everyone, we've successfully retrieved Kir from the FBI, but Akai might still try something to get her back, so be wary, but otherwise we're done and you're free to go off wherever you wish."

However, immediately after he ended the radio call, Kir said, "Akai won't try anything to retrieve me. That would be counterproductive to his plan."

Gin's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

Kir crossed her arms and groaned unhappily, her expression one of bitter frustration. "Gin, I don't know how, but they – Akai and Conan – know about me. They know I'm a CIA agent, they know I'm Ethan Hondou's daughter, they know how I killed my father, and they even came up with a fake version to explain how he could have committed suicide by making it look like I murdered him to protect me from being found out. They never said my real name to my face, but they have contact with my little brother, so they could get it from him if they really wanted to. At this point, I am _honestly_ surprised they still haven't figured out the Organization deals with aliens."

Gin had gone slack-jawed as he listened to Kir relay all the information that had been revealed about her. That was not where Kudo had stood with regards to his information about Kir yesterday, according to Sherry. How was it possible for him to have discovered so much more in less than twenty-four hours that it completely turned his thinking around and delivered him to the truth?

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "From what Sherry told me, your brother has been poking his nose into Detective Mouri's business trying to find you, so Kudo had access to a wellspring of information that he shouldn't have. We should have done something about young Eisuke to prevent that, but it didn't even cross my mind."

"I understand. I imagine you were a bit more preoccupied with finding _me_ rather than managing my clumsy kid brother," Kir said with a kind smile. "Thank you for finding me though, and I'm glad it's in a much better condition than the last time."

Gin gave a dismissive snort. "The chances of that happening to you again are incredibly unlikely. So, what were you saying earlier about how retrieving you from us would be counterproductive to Akai's plan?"

Kir hesitated. "While I never saw Shuichi Akai in action while he was part of the Organization, I'm familiar with his reputation, and I saw a bit of what you meant about Conan Edogawa's intelligence when I first met him several months ago. They're frighteningly perceptive on their own, but working together… they're something else. Together, they may be able to do what one of them alone could not."

"Kir, you're not making any sense right now," he told her, and if his tone was a little snappish, it was because hers was making him feel uneasy.

"Together, they've concocted a plan... a detailed, convoluted, far-reaching plan that, so far, has gone _exactly_ as they outlined it would when they explained it to me last night after they caught me awake. It's a plan to give me safely back to the Organization without anyone getting killed, no matter what suspicious points may have cropped up upon retrieval," she said.

"Go on," he encouraged when she stopped.

"In the event that the FBI felt the need to move me, or at least pretend to, Akai and Conan knew they were going to use three vans with two of them being decoys-"

Gin sniffed. "It was a predictable move. Anyone could have foreseen that."

"-and they predicted that _you_ would see through which of the vans were fake and correctly identify the one I was in."

His jaw tightened.

Kir continued, "Once you were tailing us, they told me to hit the driver with the bomb I had been given, though I don't think he expected it – I suppose it was to make it sound more realistic over the radio. The driver intentionally crashed the van in the position that he did, at the _location_ he did, so that he would be able to escape the van through the gap in the barrier when the bomb exploded without you being any the wiser to his survival."

"And why does Shuichi Akai want you back in the Organization?" he asked, though he felt he knew the answer.

"Information. Since I'm a current member that hasn't been discovered as a NOC, he wants me to be a fishing line for the FBI. I imagine their information sources has been cut quite drastically since Akai was exiled from the Organization. I warned him that my primary mission was to the CIA, even if it became inconvenient for the FBI, but he didn't seem to mind."

"So it _was_ intentionally too easy to get you back," Gin growled through gritted teeth.

"They expect you to be suspicious about that too."

His eyes widened and he actually took them off the road for a moment to stare at her. "What?"

Kir nodded grimly. "I told you their plan is far-reaching. It's still not finished yet. They predicted you would be suspicious about how easy it was to retrieve me and that you'll require I do… something to prove beyond a doubt my loyalty to the Organization." She took a deep breath. "They predicted you would order me to call out Shuichi Akai with the promise of information to escape the Organization where I'm being treated like a black sheep for getting caught… and that you would order me – while I'm wearing a portable video camera and an audio feed – to kill him at Raiha Pass… with a bullet to the head."

Heavy silence followed Kir's final words as Gin processed them. "How do they intend to pull that off?" he asked woodenly.

"I shoot blanks and he manually bursts some blood pods in sync with my shots so you don't question the lack of blood. Around that time, some police officers will be on the road on their way to a supposed accident which will cause you to turn off the feed and leave the area posthaste. Then together, we swap his 'dead' body for the real one in the back seat that belongs to Rikumichi Kusuda who also has a bullet wound to the head, making sure to keep his right hand in his pants pocket to protect the fingerprints from burning away when I dispose of the body with one of the bombs. Akai makes his escape and I drive away, leaving the unwary police to witness the explosion and discover the body so badly damaged, nobody can identify it," Kir explained. "But the FBI _will_ identify it as him because Akai and Conan staged a scene at the hospital where Akai made a great show of grabbing Conan's phone with his non-dominant right hand because Rikumichi Kusuda had held Conan's phone with that hand earlier, but the police will not find Akai's fingerprints. He had put glue on the tips of his fingertips long before grabbing the phone."

When she had finished speaking, Gin sat frozen stiff, only vaguely seeing the road ahead of him. Kir's words unnerved him far more than he cared to admit, even to himself. In fact, their plan unnerved him even more than how much information they'd been able to dig up about Kir, because from their perspective of him being a cautious, psychopathic murderer, it was accurate. He would do exactly as Kir had just outlined. They had planned for this very course of action since last night down to the last step he would take – because nothing was more certain than death – and had prepared to conduct a body swap from the outset, one so perfect that even the FBI would be fooled into believing it. Akai had proven himself capable of reading his motions and even predicting them to an extent whereas Kudo had shown _some_ planning ability against Vermouth, but was rather lacking in foresight and only luck had saved him when his plans went south. Shinichi Kudo had never _ever_ once been able to anticipate his movements, so where was this sudden long-term strategic scheming ability between the two coming from? If they could get this far working together, then how was he supposed to stay ahead of them in making sure they didn't discover the Men in Black?

Gin didn't think he'd ever _liked_ Akai, even before the questionable business with Scotch and his proven untrustworthiness later. He'd respected his skills the same way he respected Bourbon's or Vermouth's, but he'd never liked him. Only some of that was due in part to the fact that Akai had used Akemi without any regard for her feelings in order to get close to Sherry and wriggle his way into the Organization. Now however, only Vermouth ranked higher in his hatred for him.

"Since they seem so confident in their ability to read me, perhaps we should go along with it," he growled.

"Eh? But Gin, if you want to throw them off-track, then wouldn't it be better to not do what they expect?" Kir asked.

"As much as I would love to knock their egos down a few pegs, it's to my advantage to let this plan occur," Gin said and a cruel smile started curling his lips. "An escaped Akai in hiding from the Organization _and_ his FBI colleagues is little better off than a dead Akai. Even if we don't know how he will disguise himself, his options will be limited to the vicinity of the one person who knows his secret and helped him plan his death. He won't stray too far and once Sherry finds him, I'll know _exactly_ where he is."

It still wouldn't be a complete win for him because he wouldn't have the excuse to look for him if he was dead and until Sherry discovered his new identity, he wouldn't know who to look for in future encounters. He would take what he could get out of this situation though.

"Gin, are you going to let Vodka in the car, or are you just going to have him follow behind us the whole time?"

Without even glancing at the rearview mirror, he said, "We're dropping off the motorcycle at one of the storage depots first. No sense leaving it around for someone to steal and I want you to stay close to me until this whole business with Akai is finally over. Maybe our informant at the hospital can offer us some insight on when would be a good time to call Akai out to Raiha Pass."

()()()()()

Haibara couldn't believe she'd been separated from Conan for less than twenty-four hours and not only had he proven Hidemi Hondou and Rena Mizunashi were the same person, but he had figured out she was also a CIA agent like her late father _and_ concocted a plan with Akai to send her back to Gin without letting it look like they were just _giving her away_.

"With her now back in the Black Organization again, at last their destruction is in sight," Conan said with the same arrogance he always experienced whenever he encountered the Organization and got something new out of them.

After the number of times he'd been sent frantically back-pedaling because he pushed too far, Haibara had no idea where this never-ending fountain of confidence came from. "Well, you're already well aware, but don't underestimate them, especially Gin," she warned.

"Yeah, I understand," Conan said off-handedly and started messing around with the soccer ball.

"Do you really understand?" she snapped in annoyance. Honestly, why did she even bother?

Maybe he'd sensed she was displeased with his quick dismissal because he caught the soccer ball in his hands and looked at her somewhat apologetically.

"And? Did they say if that Eisuke kid went into the witness protection program?" she asked, deciding to shift the topic of conversation.

"No, I heard he didn't like the idea," Conan answered. "It seems the FBI is still trying to persuade him though."

Haibara averted her eyes and dropped her gaze to the sidewalk below. "No surprise," she muttered. "I refused as well." Though her reasons for doing so were much different from Eisuke's.

"Well, they give you a new name and nationality. The system makes you someone else entirely, so I guess it can't be helped," Conan sighed as he resumed kicking the ball into the air with his head and feet, then caught it with his hands again. "Actually, I think he'll reject the program and become an ally, just as you did. He's pretty clumsy, but he has a sharp mind."

That wasn't much of a compliment. "But are you sure it's alright? Unlike me, that guy seems to be excessively reckless." About as reckless as Kudo, come to think of it.

"It's fine, he's with Ms. Jodie and Mr. Akai now," Conan said reassuringly.

Speaking of Akai, if he had really worked together with Kudo on their plan to give Kir back to the Organization, then he must already know there was more to him than a brilliant seven-year-old. Kudo was too transparent about his true identity and Akai was too smart to not pick up on the strangeness, even if he had no idea Conan Edogawa was actually seventeen. It was almost worth trying to get back in contact with him and then she could erase his memory of the meeting afterward.

"This Akai person, I would like to meet him at least once," she said.

Conan jumped, looking bewildered. "Eh? Why?"

"No matter what you really are, you still look like a first-year elementary school student," Haibara reminded him. "A smart and capable FBI agent listening to the ramblings of a child, doesn't that interest you?"

"Ah… well… see…" Conan stuttered and looked away nervously.

Haibara's brow furrowed. "What? Is there a reason I shouldn't meet him?"

"Uh, n-no…" he said uneasily and looked away again.

"… Hey," she said, trying to get his attention again, but he didn't even seem to hear her. Then he glanced out of the corner of his eyes at her with that familiar narrow-eyed expression. Wait a minute… he hadn't…

"Could he be… Could that guy be…?" she started in alarm and watched Conan's expression jump from uncomfortable to panicked. He _did_ know! Haibara quickly switched tracks. "Is he a lolicon by any chance?" Conan looked away in relief, but she chose to misinterpret it. "I was right?!"

"That's stupid!" he shot back while she crossed her arms and glared at him.

Damn it all, he'd somehow learned about her sister's relationship with Akai too. How had he even found out about it? That wasn't information Akai would have just readily volunteered, especially not to a stranger and a seven-year-old at that.

"Ah! You two are whispering to each other again!" Ayumi accused, drawing the attention of the other kids onto them.

Well, if what Kudo had told her was true, then Kir also knew everything that he had discussed with her and was probably informing Gin of the intended deception right this moment. He wouldn't be caught off-guard by them this time. It might interest him to know that Kudo was aware of Akai's and Akemi's relationship, but it was hardly critical, mission-threatening information. She supposed she should just try to enjoy this hotel buffet they were visiting for lunch and not worry about it.

()()()()()

Shuichi Akai's navy Chevrolet truck appeared not from the right but the left, even though that meant the driver's side of the foreign car was on the far side, _away_ from Rena Mizunashi. It was not an ideal position for someone who wanted to make a quick getaway. The white headlights turned off and the man of the hour slid to the other side and stepped out, leaning against the frame with his left arm, his right hand shoved into his pants pocket.

Rena Mizunashi walked closer, her heels clicking with every step upon the black asphalt. "Is something wrong?" she asked. "You came from the opposite direction." The farther direction.

Akai inclined his head. "I arrived ahead of you so I could scout out the area."

Rena stopped halfway across the pitch-black road. "I see. And were the results correct? That I really did come alone?"

His sharp avocado green eyes narrowed and flicked left, then right. "Yeah… it seems so," he said slowly.

Gin observed all of this with Vodka through the video stream from his car lurking on a road higher up and further back than the bend where Kir and Akai were currently meeting.

" _So, as for your offer in exchange for help escaping, let me hear what information you have,"_ Akai said.

" _Yeah, as for what I can offer you…"_ Kir said quietly.

The blast of a gunshot echoed through the video and reached them from outside the car. A couple seconds later – maybe a couple too long – Akai's eyes widened and blood trickled out of the right corner of his mouth. He groaned and backed up into his truck, pressing his left hand to the right side of his chest. Then he looked over his right shoulder, almost directly behind him.

On the video screen, he stared in that direction for a while, and Gin knew he was looking at them. Akai knew that they were nearby.

Blood started to ooze from the spot where his left hand lay and Akai faced fully forward. His breathing was shallow and every ragged intake of air seemed to cause him great pain.

"What's wrong Kir? Hurry and finish him off," Gin told her through the earpiece. He told her so because that was what Akai expected. He was ruthless and efficient and there was no more permanent solution than death.

" _But I shot out his lung,"_ Kir said. _"Even if we leave him, he won't last thirty minutes."_

It was too long. Too much would be left up to chance. Anything could happen in thirty minutes. "The head. Drive a bullet right into his head, that way we can be sure that his life has come to an end."

" _Roger,"_ she said solemnly.

She walked forward, her heels clicking once more. Through his pained breathing, Akai noticed her approach and she stopped just in front of him, her handgun raised to the center of his forehead.

A half-chuckle escaped Akai's blood-stained lips and he met Kir's eyes. _"To think you'd go this far…"_ he whispered, but not quietly enough to not be heard.

" _I'm surprised myself…"_ said Kir, less quietly still. _"that it's worked out this well."_

Another gunshot, accompanied by a burst of light from the muzzle, blasted through the canyon and the video. Akai lurched backward and collapsed onto the truck bench. His blood spurted everywhere and stained the truck's interior as he fell, more of it pooling around his head. Not even a minute later, the wail of sirens could be heard and were growing louder.

"The police…" Gin murmured, watching the flashing, spinning red lights coming from the same direction that Akai had come from.

"Just as Kir said," Vodka agreed.

He nodded and picked up the radio. "Kir, clean up and get away quickly," he ordered.

" _Roger,"_ she said and pulled out a small plastic bomb, the same type that had been sent to Haido Central Hospital earlier that day.

Satisfied as best he could be in this situation, Gin then cut the video connection as Vodka started the engine and drove away. He was not supposed to witness the body swap between Akai and Rikumichi Kusuda and he didn't want to. Even knowing it was fake, he had still taken a particularly savage pleasure in watching Akai 'die' before his very eyes.

However, reality was unfortunately much less pleasant. Taking out his phone, he sent two text messages. One was to 'that person' quickly confirming Akai's current fake KIA status. The other was to Sherry. She still didn't like him contacting her, but if Akai and Kudo had put in _this_ much effort to fool even the FBI, then Kudo would never tell her about the plan to fake Akai's death, and this was something she needed to know.

 _Remember to delete this after you read it. Kir is safe. Kudo and Akai conspired to fake Akai's death. Keep a lookout for any suspicious people that show up near Kudo sometime soon and inform me. That will be Akai._

 _\- Gin_

He sent the message, knowing she would appreciate the warning even if she still scolded him for it, and snapped his phone shut, ready for this long, unlucky day to be over.

 _Haibara read the text message that evening once she got home, so when Jodie Starling gave Conan his phone back – or rather, a new phone – and he called out to her, but didn't say anything, Haibara cast her accusing gaze on the back of his bowed head, knowing exactly what he had done._

()()()()()

The latest case Haibara had gotten involved in had brought her, Kudo, and the rest of the kids into contact with an engineering graduate student that Ayumi had decided to introduce to the Professor. All of them had quickly grown bored after they dropped him off, so that was how she was left in the house with only Conan and Agasa with her in the company of a stranger who had initially given off the same black pressure that Vermouth emitted when she was the focus of all of her hatred and ill will.

"So someday, you'll earn your doctorate and become my professional rival, eh?" Agasa said somewhat teasingly to Subaru Okiya.

"No, nothing like that," the fair-haired man deflected. "But what a big house you have. Is it just the two of you here? You and the child?"

"Yeah."

"Well, it doesn't seem there would be any problem adding another," Okiya said.

"Eh?"

Haibara gasped and her fists tightened on Dr. Agasa's shirt. No, not that. There was _no way_ she was allowing this man – and one who had given off that aura of dark intentions, no matter how brief – to stay in the same house as her.

"The thing is, the apartment building where I was living burned down. If it's alright, could you let me stay here until I find another place to live?" Okiya asked. "Of course, when I have free time, I'll do anything you need to help with your research."

"Ah, well, I don't mind as long as it's okay with this kid," Agasa said, looking down at her.

Haibara very quickly and vehemently shook her head. Bad idea. Bad idea.

Conan suddenly piped up, "Say, how about using Shinichi's house?"

"Shinichi's house?" Okiya repeated.

"Yeah, there's nobody living there right now. Look, it's that house next door. He's left the keys with me," he said, pointing out Dr. Agasa's window.

Haibara's mouth fell open in shock. What… what was he doing? Had he lost his mind?

"Oh, what a splendid western-style house," Okiya said appreciatively. "Is this okay?"

"Yup!"

"Hold on," she said and grabbed his shoulder, dragging him backward. Conan flailed for a moment, but regained his balance quickly. "What are you thinking?" she hissed into his ear. "You're renting your house to a person whose background we don't know. What will you do if he finds out your secret?"

"It's alright," Conan said.

How? _How_ was this alright? She removed her hand and waited for his reason.

"There's no way a Holmes fan could be a bad person!"

"… Huh?" was all she could say. Her brain was thrown off by his carefree, irresponsible answer.

While she was still trying to wrap her head around what Kudo (who was usually as suspicious about strangers as she was) had so blithely disregarded, Conan handed his keys over to Okiya. "Here, these are the keys to the house."

"Are you sure this is okay?" Okiya repeated as he took the offered keys. "That Shinichi won't mind?"

"Yeah, I'll email him later," Conan reassured him.

Why? Why was Kudo so trusting of this guy? They had only just met today and it was as a detective to a suspect in a fire arson case. He should know better than to let some strange person live in his empty house. Suddenly, as if she'd been struck by lightning, the words from Gin's last text leaped out at her: _Keep a lookout for any suspicious people that show up near Kudo sometime soon and inform me. That will be Akai._ Haibara looked at Okiya more carefully. Was that it? Was this Akai and that was why Kudo was being so uncharacteristically blasé, because he knew he was safe even if Akai figured out his identity?

"Thank you, you've really helped me," Okiya said with a grateful smile.

Conan smiled, and it wasn't his little kid smile, but the serious one he got when he solved a case. "In exchange, guard the house while he's away."

'Guard' the house, huh?. An unusual choice of words for an unknown freeloader.

"Yes, of course," Okiya said.

Although the voice was completely different, Haibara was half-convinced that the speech pattern was still Akai's. This Subaru Okiya had to be Shuichi Akai. No other explanation made sense. Taking a chance, she discretely slipped her phone out of her back pocket and secretly took a picture of Okiya while he and Conan were still staring at each other, then hid it again. After that, Conan offered to take 'Okiya' on a tour of the house and they left together, leaving just her and Agasa alone in the room.

Once they were gone, Haibara rounded on the professor she'd been hiding behind. "You knew," she accused. "You knew that was Akai, didn't you?"

Agasa spluttered. "A-Ai, what are you talking about?"

Her blue-green eyes narrowed. "You and Kudo are both rotten liars. Shuichi Akai had to get the technology to change his voice somehow and who better than the one who had originally created the voice-changing bowtie? Did you think I didn't know that Akai had faked his death?" Agasa startled and she crossed her arms. "Did you think I didn't _need_ to know that? Or was that all Kudo's idea? I may not be an active member with the Men in Black right now, but I'm not so cut off as _that_."

"I'm sorry, Ai. It _was_ Shinichi's idea not to tell you. He figured the less people who knew, the more successful his death would be perceived," Agasa said apologetically.

Haibara huffed. "I understand. Kudo can be pretty convincing when he wants to. I'm not mad. I'm annoyed, but I'm not mad... at least not at you."

She pulled her phone out once more and opened up the text message box, inputting Gin's number. She attached the picture to the message and typed only two words: Subaru Okiya. Haibara smirked and pressed 'send'.

* * *

 _'cepho' means head/brain and 'sang' means blood, hence 'brain blood'. I decided I wanted to be clever with the alien name for Rikumichi Kusuda instead of just throwing a bunch of syllables together and calling it a name like I usually do._

 _I completely did not intend to fill in the altered details of Kir's and Ethan Hondou's backstory; that happened all on its own. However, rewatching the Clash of Red and Black episodes again, I have to wonder if Aoyama-sama has forgotten that he left a Black Organization informant at Haido Central Hospital close enough to the FBI (if not an actual FBI agent) to receive word about Agent Camel being caught up in the midst of a murder case...  
_

 _The last part of this chapter includes the first half of the 'W Code' episode that finishes off the Red, White, and Yellow case where Subaru Okiya is first introduced._

 _Next chapter features the thirteenth movie, Raven Chaser. Yes, I intentionally skipped the fifth movie, Countdown to Heaven, because I couldn't think of anything to do with it that would be interesting. It'll probably take a while, I'm still working on the chapter outline.  
_


	12. Raven Chaser

**Author's Note: Dear god, this chapter is nearly 14,000 words; how the hell do I write so much? Anyway I decided to change the rating of this fic to 'M', not because there's anything present in this chapter to finally warrant the change, but because this entire story has been the most rebellious, disobedient child I've ever worked with, and even though I'm not PLANNING on writing anything to necessitate the change, this story may decide to be completely wanton without my consent again. The fact that this story even EXISTS as long as it is is proof enough of that (there was never even a suggestion of a plan in my brain to turn this into an actual multi-chapter story when I first started writing this and yet here I am).  
**

 **Took me a while to get this one done for two big reasons. One, I had a lot of major life changes happen within the past six months (new job, moving, getting settled, figuring out expenses, etc). Two, despite being based on existing material, I actually had to write a lot of this chapter from scratch which naturally required more effort on my part.**

 **Naturally, the entirety of this chapter takes place within the 13th DC movie, Raven Chaser. I love that movie so much and that nightmare scene right before the opening intro gets me every freaking time, even knowing what happens and that it's not real. It's just such a powerful representation of everything Conan dreads and the consequence of his failure to keep his survival a secret.**

* * *

Raven Chaser

The streets of Tokyo are no more or less intimidating and frightful than your average highly-populated metropolitan cityscape. The stars in the sky had been swallowed up by the darkness and instead, the man-made stars in the form of cars, traffic and street lights, neon signs, billboards, and skyscrapers of every size shown dismal and sad from their lowly vantage, winking up at the sky in feeble mockery of the obscured heavenly pinpricks of light. In this city built by men, people drive, take the bus, bike, and walk. But under the cover of darkness, those of the slimy underbelly wriggle out of their hidey holes and daytime personas, to shed their skins in hideous revelry and stalk the night in search of prey. At this hour, the unwary, the weak, the foolish, and the defenseless depart from their sanctums of refuge at their peril.

A man passed under a street light on the sidewalk at this time of night in one of the cheaper, and by consequence shadier, parts of the city. That by itself did not make him noteworthy. The fact that he walked at an easy pace facing straight ahead in such an area without even glancing left and right; _that_ was more interesting. He walked with confidence, unafraid of being assaulted, and this was a key trait of most individuals of the predatory underbelly. He must be a top predator at that, for even other criminals are prey to the masters of their craft. Although, perhaps such a conclusion about this person was too hastily reached. Perhaps his confidence was attributed to his height, for he was very tall (being over six feet), even for the standards of those in the Western world. To Japan, this man was a giant with short blond hair, and was very clearly a foreigner. He wore blue jeans and had on a black hoodie with the collar of a tight black muscle shirt visible at his neckline. His hands, probably large, well-muscled hands if one judged by his shoulders and height, were hidden inside the pockets of his hoodie and he didn't seem to be carrying anything on his person.

Truthfully, apart from the odd hour and his lack of furtive glancing, there wasn't anything suspicious about this foreign man, except, to the paranoid, for the moment when he suddenly turned off the sidewalk into a dark, narrow alley. If anyone had been following this man and looked down that same alley to continue watching him, they'd have found no sign of him. Running down the alley to the opposite parallel street would have been a fruitless effort, for they wouldn't have found him there either. It was like he'd completely vanished into thin air. What such a person would quite easily miss, unless they combed the alleyway carefully, and only at day because it was impossible to see at night, was the presence of a door set into one of the alley walls and half-hidden behind two dumpsters.

The presence of such doors was not uncommon as they quite often served as backdoors into buildings. This particular door, once it was found, led immediately down a set of stairs to the basement of what had formerly been the storage space for a packing and shipping company that had operated just upstairs. The company had either gone out of business or moved to a different location three months ago, but the end result was the same which was that this basement and the floor above it were deserted.

The basement was completely empty except for some heavy metal racks that had come with the place, so were never moved out, and it was almost pitch-black within. The night sky may be starless and the moon unable to reach the far-distant ground, but it was neither rainy nor cloudy and the yellow lamps from the streetlights were able to peek dimly through the small, rectangular glass windows along the basement ceiling in line with the street. The presence of such feeble illumination hardly amounted to anything where diurnal-primed visibility was concerned, and it was most successful at casting great looming, sinister shadows across the walls, racks, and floor. The door had not been locked, so anything could be hiding within this dark lair.

" _ **Ah, Irish, you've arrived,"**_ a sweet, evanescent voice called out and it rippled through the room like water, pleasant and soothing.

The man, identified by the disembodied voice as Irish, seemed to momentarily stiffen at the sound, but then relaxed. He was staring straight ahead into the darkness, but a faint ray of streetlight peeked through and it struck something that somewhat resembled a human female in figure but was a fierce blood red color. Both darker and lighter red bars and spots decorated this figure, but they shifted about her body in a subtle, undulating rhythm like the gentle back-and-forth of the ocean tide on the beach, so you couldn't help but relax.

" _ **So, please tell me, my dear Irish, what news do you have for me? Have you managed to recover the data chip with the NOC list for the Men in Black yet?"**_ the female-sounding voice said in honeyed tones.

Irish bowed his neck to the glistening red female figure before him and shook his head. "No, Pandora, Parliamentary Secretary Masaaki Okakura was already dead long before I arrived and the Men in Black's NOC data was nowhere to be found on his person, in his office, his home, or anywhere. I believe whoever killed him may have stolen it as a trophy for the murder they committed."

A sweet, mournful sigh of resignation escaped her. _**"It cannot be helped, I suppose. It is not your fault that you were unable to complete your objective within the time I specified due to this unforeseen complication. You have served me quite well since acceding to my request and that's good news indeed, a mark in your favor in spite of the failure. Don't fret, Irish, I promise to make sure you will have the chance to steal back the NOC list and make it up to me. I have plenty of other pawns I can manipulate to accomplish my objective."**_

()()()()()

 _Four days before Tanabata, after the Police Conference…_

Boredom would kill Gin before a bullet did. He had better things to do with his time than act as Vermouth's chauffeur, but he stayed where he was parked on the side of the road near the police headquarters and ready to leave as soon as Vermouth got out of the conference. She was disguised of course; her true face was too famous to show just anywhere and if things fell through, then she would need to take over the undercover aspect of their _own_ investigation. Said investigation was the sole reason he was willing to put up with being Vermouth's driver for this occasion.

Gin spotted movement in his rearview mirror and he wearily glanced at it with sharp green eyes, then sat up a little straighter. The front doors to the Metropolitan police HQ had opened and Vermouth had appeared, walking briskly directly toward his car. He didn't start it up until she had opened the door and slipped into the passenger seat. Gin pulled back onto the main road, but not before catching a brief glimpse of a small boy with black hair and glasses in his mirrors: Conan Edogawa. Gin grimaced; there was no doubt the kid recognized his car and had probably pinned the disguised Vermouth as a member of the Organization before he'd even realized the black Porsche was so close by. Great. That was _just_ what they needed right now. The Organization was in the middle of a crisis and Shinichi Kudo was alert to their interest in this serial murder.

Already much more short-tempered than usual lately, Gin snapped, "Vermouth, did you already inform 'that person' about what you heard at the conference?"

Vermouth ripped off the male face mask with a breathless exhale and said, "Yes, he knows. I texted him while I was waiting for the elevator to arrive."

"Wonderful," he grumbled bitterly, figuring that Kudo had probably heard the 'Seven Children' melody.

"Eh?" Vermouth chirped.

"I saw one Conan Edogawa run out the front doors just as I was pulling out onto the main road," Gin explained.

"I see…" Vermouth said with a slow nod. "Too bad. That will make things difficult for us."

Gin grunted in affirmation. "So, how did the conference go?"

"Not much happened. It was mostly a gathering of all the relevant parties and putting everyone on the same page in the investigation. The police are still trying to determine the link all the victims have with each other and their murderer. The most recent victim was killed in a car accident instead of being stabbed by a right-handed knife wielder, but they found a mahjong tile with the body, so the police believe he should be included. He even left a dying message, saying 'Tanabata Kyo'. Does that mean anything to you?"

Gin, having absorbed everything she said, shook his head briefly. "No, nothing comes to mind. And the other matter…?"

"Irish's cover is secure. Nobody suspects a thing," she said confidently.

"I still don't get why you're having Irish do this undercover infiltration. This isn't his type of work," he protested, for not the first time since the assignment had been given.

Vermouth laughed, "He asked me to, Gin. What could I do, tell him 'no'?"

Gin fixed her with a steely glare as his answer.

Vermouth only laughed again, a more sultry laugh than the previous one. "Now Gin, isn't it better that Irish is the one infiltrating the police instead of me? Shinichi Kudo doesn't know Irish and since I've already left, he won't even consider the possibility that there was another member of the Organization at that conference."

They had not known that Detective Mouri would be invited to attend the conference and that Kudo would be in such close proximity, but Gin was forced to concede Vermouth's point regardless. "And Superintendent Matsumoto is safe?"

Vermouth looked at him askance with such visible hurt reflected in her bluish eyes, Gin might have felt guilty if he weren't so wise to her nature. Sure enough, when she got no reaction from him, her expression cleared, but it was still surprisingly solemn.

"We may not be as close as we used to be…"

One of his eyebrows shot up in deep skepticism.

"… but we've been able to maintain a decent professional working relationship despite those obstacles."

That too was questionable.

"However, this situation is bigger than the both of us. If the NOC list falls into the wrong hands, then the entire MiB falls, as you well know. The MiB's very existence is in a precarious situation and I would not have done anything to further exacerbate that. Can you believe me to this extent, Gin?" Vermouth said.

He wanted to, if only because it would mean one less thing for him to worry about, but there were voices lingering in the back of his mind and whispering insistently _'Calvados'_ and _'Sherry.'_ The one who she'd killed and the one she'd tried to kill.

"I trust your work, not your goals," he said by way of compromise and Vermouth accepted this non-answer. After that, the two high-ranking members lapsed into silence and, to Gin's delight, did not speak another word to each other for the rest of the car ride.

()()()()()

 _Four days before Tanabata, evening of the Police Conference…_

It was never a good thing when Kudo came over to the Professor's house and started speaking with his old friend in hushed voices when she was out of the room. It was 95% guaranteed that he had discovered something about the Organization that he thought would freak her out and he didn't want her to worry. Fortunately, despite his age (or maybe because of it), Dr. Agasa still had difficulty cuing into the proper volume settings in a timely manner and couldn't seem to figure out how to create a shocked whisper with his machine. Haibara had been working in the basement when she had heard such a vocal exclamation and promptly decided to investigate the cause.

She turned off the computer monitor and crept quick and silent up the stairs. When she had just about reached the top, she crouched down as low as she could go on the last step and peaked out into the circular living room and kitchen. Kudo and the Professor were sitting on their own separate purple couches with only a single large light turned on to illuminate their space. They were both completely engrossed in their conversation, and speaking softly, but not enough so that their words were unintelligible at this distance. Still, Haibara carefully picked herself off the step and tiptoed across the room, listening in to their conversation as she made her way to the back of Dr. Agasa's couch. She heard Vermouth's name and Kudo's inference that she had been at the police conference he had attended because the hack detective from Gunma had heard the 'Seven Children' dial tones that keyed into the Boss's phone.

"But why…?" Dr. Agasa began.

"My, my, and here I was wondering what you two were whispering about," Haibara said as she walked around from the back of the couch as a way of announcing her presence to Kudo.

"Haibara!" Conan exclaimed wide-eyed and startled.

"So, why do you think it was Vermouth?" she asked, straight to the point. "The push-button tones alone wouldn't-"

"-Because Gin's Porsche was there too."

Haibara broke off with a gasp and alarmed eyes. Gin was there? Why?! What had happened to warrant his personal attention to an infiltration of the police conference on an ordinary serial murder?

Conan blithely continued, completely unaware that her reaction was borne out of concern, not fear. "The risk would be too high for them to infiltrate the police without a disguise and when it comes to disguises, Vermouth does it best."

This was true and if Gin was involved, it probably _had_ been Vermouth which only worried Haibara further. After Vermouth's near-successful murder attempt on her a while ago, Gin would not interact with Vermouth unless he absolutely had to from a professional standpoint, and not at all from a personal one. What kind of alien activity was involved in this serial murder? It had to be big.

"In any case, it's now safe to assume that these cases somehow involve the Black Organization and I'd like to investigate these cases as well. Can you lend me a hand?" Kudo said, directing this last to the Professor.

"I don't mind, but…" Dr. Agasa trailed off, glancing down at her.

Haibara huffed, "Even if I told you to stop, you would never give up, would you?" This was said rhetorically. Of course he wouldn't; it was against his nature. "But you need to be on high alert," she reminded him gravely. "I'm sure you're already aware, but if your identity were exposed to them…"

"Yeah, I know," Kudo replied evenly, his blue eyes steady on hers.

It was significant to her that he didn't try and blow off her warning as he had sometimes done in the past when things were good and the Organization was nowhere in sight. It was a mark of how seriously he was treating his situation. With the Organization already so close by and alert, he could not afford to be careless lest he give away his secret and endanger the lives of everyone around him. That was what he truly believed and it was Haibara's job to make sure it stayed that way.

Kudo remained a little longer to talk to Dr. Agasa about the route they would take to visit all the murder locations and how much time he would take off of school to accomplish this, but Haibara retreated back down to her work station in the basement full of her own thoughts. She turned the computer monitor back on and reached for her phone, flipping it open to look at the time on the front screen. It was 9:15 PM and fully dark outside. It wasn't too late, so there was still a chance… She dialed and raised the phone to her ear.

It didn't even ring but went straight to Gin's voicemail and that worried her even more. It was _incredibly_ rare that she got to Gin's voicemail and even rarer still for his phone to be turned off. He was too important to the MiB to go off the grid like that for long. His work must have started early tonight, and he was in such a place that he couldn't afford to have his phone on. If her instincts were right, this off-grid night prowl he was on was probably connected to the Organization's interest in today's police conference. This mystery was becoming more enigmatic and more terrifying by the minute. Whatever was going on, it was no average serial murder.

Haibara left her message, informing Gin that Kudo was aware he and Vermouth had been at the police conference, so they would know to be on guard, and hung up. She set her phone down and turned to the computer to resume her work on the Apoptoxin antidote, but after a few minutes of making no significant progress in the formula, Haibara gave up. Between Kudo and Gin, her brain was too distracted by other things to focus properly on reversing the Apoptoxin effects at this time. Deciding her project was a lost cause for the evening, she saved her work and shut down the computer before starting to get ready for bed.

()()()()()

 _Three days before Tanabata, one day after the Police Conference…_

There are two major reasons for why predators will choose to do most of their hunting at night. It's too hot during the day or that's when the prey of choice is more vulnerable. Sometimes it was both. Naturally, if one is a hunter of such nocturnal predators, you may be forced to do your own hunting at night if you cannot find them during the day when they're at their weakest. This was the situation that Chianti and Korn found themselves operating under and they'd had very little rest for days now. For over a week, they had been prowling and poking around the alien underground of Japan centered around the Tokyo prefecture during the evenings. During the day, they had taken the 'tracks' left by their target in the night and extrapolated where it might go based on its patterns of movement. It seemed to be slowly making its way northeast and they were spending this night looking for concrete evidence of their target in one of the cities of the Kanagawa prefecture.

Finally, it seemed as though their hard work was going to pay off.

"Chianti, 400 yards, 10 o'clock," Korn murmured, staring through the scope of his rifle at a spot at ground level.

Suddenly more alert than she had been all night, Chianti brought her own rifle to bear on the spot Korn had sighted and peered through the scope. There _was_ something down in the street. A little bugger that looked no bigger than a human kid of about six or seven was edging along the dark edge of the street near the buildings out of the light. It might have passed for a human kid too if it didn't have green skin, a stubby tail, four evenly-spaced horns on its noggin, and a protruding snout. These were all normal species attributes of the aliens called UV-niks. What _wasn't_ normal was the nasty-looking plasma carbine twice as long as its body with a barbed harpoon on the end.

"Ringore," Korn said quietly.

"Yeah, that's our guy, the bounty hunter after our NOC list," Chianti agreed, watching their target through the scope for a little longer.

The miniature alien bounty hunter's illegal arrival on Earth had pinged MiB security measures, but he'd gotten past them before they could nab him. Early on in the investigation, nobody had any idea what his business on Earth entailed except that it couldn't be good. At first, there seemed to be no sense to his pattern of travel, but after Okakura was discovered dead, the serial murders came to light in the Organization's investigation and they realized Ringore's movements followed those of the murderer from Okakura onward. He was not the serial killer the police were after because he was not planet-side when the first two murders took place, but it couldn't just be coincidence. Ringore was after the Men in Black's NOC list, there was no doubt. They had no idea if Ringore had done anything yet apart from illegal entry, but they knew he had either played a role in the initial theft of the NOC list and lost it, or was still trying to make his initial acquisition of the memory card, otherwise he'd have skipped town already.

"You remember our orders, yeah?" Chianti asked.

"Arrest first. Kill if you can't," Korn answered.

"Bingo. Let's get a move on and don't let him hit you with that harpoon attachment," she said.

Korn smirked, both of them knowing the rebuke was more for Chianti's benefit. Between the two of them, she was the one with the itchy trigger finger, and he silently followed after her along the roof to jump on over to the next one to keep an eye on their target. Fortunately for them, the UV-nik didn't seem to have noticed their stalking approach yet. This was good because they had to get a _lot_ closer if they were to have any chance of arresting the alien. Chianti managed to sneak just ahead of their target's walking path until they were just shy of 100 yards away. That distance was almost entirely due to their high vantage point. She quietly set her sniper rifle down on the ground then lifted the rifle's carrying bag off her shoulder to set that on the ground too. She unzipped it and pulled out another long gun, similar in design to the sniper rifle, but shorter and a lot more fragile-looking, like the skeleton of a rifle instead of an actual weapon. Like the Noisy Cricket, the rifle looked like it would break apart if someone tried to use it.

However, Chianti showed no disdain for the skeleton-looking rifle as she withdrew it from her bag along with a small, rectangular metal box. She opened the latch and lifted the lid, revealing two feathered darts within. She picked up one of these and loaded it into the skeleton rifle, or rather the tranquilizer gun, with the efficiency of experience and snapped the ammo box shut once finished. Chianti took a deep breath from where she sat crouching behind the roof's ledge, and then spun onto her knees to face the street and bring the tranquilizer gun to bear on the target. They were to arrest him first if possible, but Ringore was a bounty hunter and would not allow himself to be willingly caught by law enforcement in any galaxy. If they were able to knock him down with one of the tranquilizer darts, then they may actually have a chance of subduing him before he could escape.

She glanced over at Korn who had set up nearby. He was not aiming a tranquilizer gun at the target as she was, and this was intentional. If she missed the first shot, she would need time to load the next dart since this kind of tranquilizer couldn't hold more than one, and Korn would be able to give her that time by shooting out Ringore's knee or something to incapacitate his escape. Of course, Korn _still_ might have to shoot out his knee because sometimes it took a while for the sedation drugs to take effect on these aliens. It would do them no good if they nailed the target with a dart, but then lost him while waiting for him to pass out. Korn, maybe sensing her eyes locked on him, finally looked over at her and nodded once. He was ready if she was.

Chianti nodded back in affirmation and lifted the tranquilizer gun over the roof ledge, looking through the scope at her target. The tranquilizer was not her preferred weapon and it handled differently from the sniper rifle. Not only was it shorter and lighter, but it relied on pressurized carbon dioxide to launch the dart instead of gunpowder. However, she had used it often enough that she was well-experienced in the peculiarities. Ringore was within the tranquilizer's upper limit and Chianti had good aim on any long-range weapon up to 600 yards, generally speaking, but the propulsion was not as strong, which meant the acceleration could mean the difference between success and failure. Through the scope, Chianti scanned the UV-nik from its horned head to the out-of-place tennis shoes on its feet. Where would be the best place to aim? The hybrid carbine-harpoon he was carrying covered his whole back and UV-niks were a reptilian-like species with tough guard scales on select parts of their anatomy. Unfortunately, she couldn't remember exactly what those parts were. Thighs, when the aliens had them, tended to be good targets because they were fleshy with good blood supply, but did UV-niks have guard scales on their outer thighs?

"Chianti," Korn hissed urgently, quickly snapping her back to reality.

She was dawdling and if she didn't act now, they would lose their window of opportunity. She would just have to use her best judgment. Chianti mentally shook herself, took a breath, aimed the tranquilizer at the inside of Ringore's right thigh, the farther leg from her, and squeezed the trigger. She struck him, but not in the intended area. His short tail had unexpectedly swiped sideways right in the path of the oncoming dart, and that was where it had stuck him. The UV-nik did not make a sound and the only indication that it had been shot at all, apart from the feathered dart sticking out of its tail, was his pause in movement.

"Korn, cover for me!" Chianti said frantically, already moving to reload the tranquilizer for one more shot.

The crack of rifle fire from her right was Korn's answering reply. The _second_ shot firing so closely after the first nearly startled her into dropping the new dart she was holding. Just as she opened her mouth to demand information from him, he said, in a _slightly_ panicked tone, "Grazed. He's coming fast!"

An alien that moved _towards_ its attackers instead of _away_ from them was _never_ a good thing. They had no chance of taking this guy into custody if he wasn't tranq'd first. "I got one more shot, and then it's shoot to kill. Mark 'em for me," she told him as she simultaneously beat a hasty retreat from the roof ledge while loading the new dart into the tranquilizer.

It was a mark of their long partnership that they didn't need to question each other for clearer directions and smoothly responded to the changing situation with complete trust in the other's skills. Korn backed away from the ledge as well, but at a 45-degree angle in the opposite direction to herself. He had just barely managed to achieve a good distance when a small greenish blur leaped into the air and promptly landed on the ledge with a surprisingly loud _thud_ for its small size. Not a second later, Korn fired, blood spurted, and Ringore overbalanced, his arms flailing wildly. This time, Korn's mark had been true and he had struck the left knee. Those precious extra seconds he'd bought were exactly what she needed to get a quick bead on the UV-nik and fire. The dart struck Ringore in the neck only to bounce off the scaly-armored skin.

"Fucking shit!" she swore. Chianti tossed the tranquilizer rifle aside and stuffed her hand into the pouch at her waist, pulling out the tiny Noisy Cricket just as Ringore was regaining his balance. "This is the Men in Black! Don't move or we'll shoot to kill!"

Ringore turned his reptilian snout in her direction with a look of surprise. "The MiB?" he said in a guttural growl. He wasn't actually speaking Japanese or any other Earth language, but they had translators to understand him anyway – hers was neurologically routed through the butterfly tattoo around her left eye and Korn's, like Vodka's, was electronically routed through his shades – and then he gave her a big toothy grin. "I thought you were other bounty hunters after the stolen NOC list just looking to take out the competition, but you're _this_ planet's law enforcement. Congratulations on getting this far to find me, but good luck trying to catch me."

With those ominous words, Chianti and Korn fired their weapons at Ringore at the exact same time, but they missed. He had already disappeared and he wasn't anywhere else on the roof. They ran back to the ledge and looked down into the street, but there was nothing there. He had fled and was already long gone by now.

Chianti slammed her fist angrily on the roof ledge. "Damn it! We lost him!" she snarled. "Now we're back to square one trying to find him _and_ he's alert to the MiB tracking him."

"Chianti, the list," Korn said.

She grimaced. "I know. Whether he stole it first or not is still up in the air, but if he _didn't_ steal it, then word has gotten out into the galaxy pretty quickly that our NOC list was stolen. We need to get it back fast." She sighed in frustration and walked back across the rooftop to retrieve the tranquilizer rifle from where she'd discarded it. "Come on, we're not gonna get anywhere else in the investigation tonight."

"I'll inform, Gin."

Chianti nodded. "And when you do, make sure you also requisition a freeze ray or something to stop that bastard from being able to move so fast. I just hope Irish has better luck in tracking our list down on his end, 'cuz we're not doing so hot on ours."

()()()()()

 _Two days before Tanabata, two days after the police conference…_

"You know, for being one of the executive members of the Men in Black, you're not an easy man to find to report information to, Gin."

Gin all but glared at the tanned, bleached-blonde man leaning against his car in the parking garage where he had left it in order to go run some business errands for the Organization. "That's why I prefer to receive reports via text or phone call, Bourbon," he said icily.

The relaxed, easy-going smile never left the other's face as he shrugged calmly in the face of Gin's hostility. "That may be the case, but such things can be intercepted by unwanted third parties very easily if they have a will and a way, and clearly the criminal galaxy is already aware of our predicament as Chianti and Korn informed the Organization yesterday evening."

Gin had never gotten along well with Bourbon, finding the other half-Japanese man to be too much of an arrogant know-it-all. He usually didn't have to deal with him because he reported directly to Vermouth, but with the very future of the Organization at risk, it was all-hands-on-deck, even if that meant Gin had to interact with people he didn't like, such as Vermouth and now Bourbon. He couldn't deny that for all his personal dislike of the whiskey-codenamed agent, he _was_ good at intelligence gathering.

"What have you found out?" Gin asked, deciding _not_ to demand Bourbon get off his car just yet until after he'd received the report. Bourbon could be intentionally difficult when he wanted to be and there was nothing he liked better than pushing his buttons if he thought he could get away with it. He rather suspected that was the true reason Bourbon was insisting on giving the report in person.

"Not much on the alien activity front, I'm afraid," Bourbon began with another shrug. "After Chianti and Korn's encounter with Ringore, the bounty hunter seems to have completely disappeared again. We know he hasn't left the country, much less the planet, but that's all we can say for certain. The fact that he wasn't wearing a human skin during their confrontation suggests he's probably using some kind of low-key stealth technology to mask the unusually cool heat signature that's normal for the UV-nik species, which is why we're unable to track him that way."

That was hardly news to bother reporting. Bourbon wouldn't have tracked him down just for that. "What else?" he bit out.

Now Bourbon smirked. "Oh, we've made some good progress on the human activity front. The latest victim that had the car accident at Usui Pass, Shuuhei Jinno, was discovered to have been stabbed and wounded with a knife previously by a man named Minoru Fukase. I haven't yet found a connection between him and the other victims, but he's my prime suspect and I'm following up on this lead at present."

Both of Gin's eyebrows rose slightly out of interest. "And? Have you found him yet?"

Bourbon offered a grim smile. "Unfortunately not, _but_ Fukase has a girlfriend, Risa Yoshii, whom he may contact. It seems the Japanese police are also aware of this information and have the same idea as I, for I spied them inconspicuously monitoring her. I've assigned one of my own subordinates to keep me abreast of their movements, especially if they're unusual ones."

So it was indeed something, but they were logistically-speaking no closer to retrieving the NOC list than they were two days ago. Gin huffed in annoyance and stuck his hands in his coat pockets. "Who else has been informed of these details about Minoru Fukase and Risa Yoshii?" he asked.

"'That person', naturally, and also Vermouth." His blue eyes glittered wickedly when he said the American actress's name, fully aware of how much Gin despised her. "She's my direct superior after all, and she would be the one person best able to get close enough to our suspect to get him away and interrogate him without arousing suspicion."

That was true, Gin just hated relying on her talents so heavily without being able to keep a close eye on her movements. "Is that all?" he asked.

"For now, anyway," Bourbon agreed.

"Then get the fuck off my car."

()()()()()

 _One day before Tanabata, three days after the police conference…_

When Kudo called for her and Dr. Agasa to pick him up at a shrine well after the sun had finally gone down during the season when full dark meant 9 o'clock or later, Haibara knew that something was wrong. It had been three days since the police conference and he had spent two of those investigating the serial murder case. He had been back at school today, having found nothing new, so what could have happened to cause this secretive summoning on his part?

As soon as Dr. Agasa stopped the Beetle at the shrine, Kudo darted out from behind the outer wall and jumped into the car as fast as possible, telling the Professor to start driving again. He did so, and that was when Kudo revealed the reason for his secrecy. He explained how after school, he had seen the police heading into a mall, how they had tried to corner their presumed suspect, but then a hostage had gotten involved, and how that hostage had turned out to be Vermouth. Then he told her, to her immense horror, that Vermouth had informed him the Organization was following the serial murder in order to recover its NOC list and there was another member of the Organization still among the police disguised as an officer.

"… Disguised as an officer?" Haibara repeated blankly, barely able to think past her alarm that the MiB's NOC list was in jeopardy.

"Yeah, their codename is Irish. Have you ever heard it before?"

"No, never…" she admitted heavily.

Haibara didn't always tell Kudo when she recognized members' codenames, such as pretending she didn't recognize Kir, but that was not the case this time. She had never heard of an Irish before, which meant he or she wasn't too high-ranking and they didn't report directly to Gin. She knew that the officer Irish had chosen to disguise as was not in any danger – the Organization would not have let that happen – but Haibara was just as clueless as Kudo about the nature of this member, and it scared her. Who was it? Did they report to Vermouth? Did they know the truth about Kudo? Could they be trusted? So many unanswered questions and no one around to answer them. While all this was running through her head, she heard Kudo voicing his thoughts aloud about discerning Irish's identity and a shiver of fear ran through her.

"You should stop," she said quietly. Kudo paused in his ramblings and looked over at her. "If it's true that this 'Irish' has disguised as an officer, then they would've been alerted to your running after Vermouth following the conference."

In the world of aliens disguised as the planet's dominant species, one did not get to codenamed status without taking note of unusual human behaviors, and that included seven-year-old children tearing frantically after disguised MiB agents.

"Well… yeah, but…"

"Don't you get it?! The more cases you solve, the more likely it is they'll see you're Shinichi Kudo!" she shrieked.

Had it not been for Dr. Agasa's quiet plea, she would have forgotten herself entirely and spilled way too much. Haibara took the time and the silence immediately following her outburst to regather her composure and mentally thank the Professor for his timely intervention. Depending on which version of the NOC list had been stolen, _she_ might very well be on that list and she was already a target, just as Akemi had been and she suspected her parents too. For whatever reason, her family was being systematically eliminated, and the only reason she and Akemi had survived to adulthood had been entirely due to the potent protection of the Men in Black. If her enemies found out where she was, neither Kudo nor Gin would be able to move fast enough to protect her.

The problem with this Irish finding out that Conan Edogawa was Shinichi Kudo was that they would likely figure out what happened to her as a result and… she'd had this sneaking suspicion growing in her heart for some time now that whoever wanted her dead was actually someone close to the MiB. Her first suspect had been Vermouth, but she'd quickly dismissed her. Vermouth had tried to kill her once, yes, but had made no other attempts since then. She was just jealous that Gin had chosen her, and she'd never heard of Vermouth having a grudge against Akemi. She _did_ have something against her parents though, the memories of that long-ago night coming back to her in a hazy wave… but Vermouth had not made a second attempt on her life, despite possessing ample time and opportunity. It was simply coincidence that Vermouth hated her and her parents, and she had no proof that her family's killer – if it was really the work and motive of one individual – was connected to the MiB anyway.

Still, she didn't want anyone in the MiB who didn't already know about Kudo or herself to find out. If they did, there was no telling who that information may be leaked to, whether by accident or intent.

"I know what you're worried about…" Kudo said seriously after a while.

How little he truly understood.

"… but this is not something I can leave unsolved."

She knew that. He just couldn't leave a case unsolved, even if in trying to solve it, his reckless sense of justice ended up getting him killed one day. His first encounter with Gin should have been lesson enough, but he was also a stubborn fool. A stubborn, reckless, passionate, honest, optimistic fool. His actions exasperated her to no end and she wished Kudo would actually _listen_ to her when she stressed caution, but when it came down to the wire, she found him endearing and wouldn't have wanted to know him any other way. Before he left for the night, Haibara agreed to his plan not to meet up again except for at school until the whole thing blew over and silently promised to also let Gin know that Vermouth had told Kudo the NOC list had been stolen. She didn't know what the older woman's endgame was, but nothing good could come of Kudo knowing the Organization's NOC list was on the line.

()()()()()

 _One day before Tanabata, same evening…_

The door to the _Ugly Monkey_ establishment always creaked with even the slightest movement, no matter how slowly one moved it. This was for the express purpose of preventing anyone from sneaking in or out without alerting the bartenders and customers. It was a dark, quiet sort of place with a _very_ secretive sort of clientele, and if the door moved, nobody else would so much as twitch a muscle, but the entrant would immediately be pinned in place by the multitude of scrutinizing stares.

It was around eleven at night when the entrance to the _Ugly Monkey_ was thrown open with shocking force and the street backlit the tall, imposing figure outlined in a silver sheen and framed in the doorway. As was part of the unofficial protocol, all eyes were drawn to the newcomer and calculating green eyes conquered every single one who dared. The very shadows themselves seemed to shrink away from this frightening gaze. All of this was accomplished in less than a minute in complete silence and the newcomer swept in unopposed. This being was shrouded in a long black coat, the color of night, but it was the long river of silver hair that drew forth the horrified realizations from the current crop of customers.

The green eyes flicked to the bartender and a deep, harsh voice barked out, "One Dark 'N' Stormy. You know how I like it."

This rather cryptic demand was met with a sedate nod by the bartender who immediately set about making the alcoholic cocktail for what was apparently one of the more regular patrons. The silver-haired man swept past the other customers directly to an occupied table off to the side and he slid into the seat directly opposite the man already sitting there. Although… to call that individual a _man_ exactly was a bit of a stretch.

A series of popping noises emitted from the being across from the man known as _Jynnan Tonnyx_ in these parts and Gin said, as if in response, "You know how this works. I don't pay you until you give me the information, and if I think you're trying to double-cross me, I put a bullet through your skull." He moved his left hand into his coat where he touched the grip of his gun for added emphasis.

The popping noise increased in frequency and something that looked like a feathered fin appeared briefly from beneath the overlarge jacket the other was wearing.

"Smart choice," Gin sneered. "Now what do you know about Ringore's movements?"

More popping, but also some furtive rustling, followed this question. While the informant was 'talking', the bartender brought over Gin's cocktail. He took several sips from the glass, but never once did his steely green eyes flick away from the alien across from him.

After one particularly squelchy pop, Gin raised an eyebrow suddenly and hummed appreciatively. "Ohh? I already knew he was masking his lack of a sufficient heat signature, but I was unaware his species literally can't stand the heat of day, and you say he was last seen heading north toward Tokyo?"

He stuck his hand in his coat and tossed something across the table at the informant. The fin from within the jacket lunged out and caught it. It was a small circular metal tin no bigger than what one might use for a lip balm.

"There's your payment. Replenishment of your salt moisturizer compounds for your fins." His business complete, Gin downed the rest of his drink, paid his bill and the tip, and strode out of the establishment. He had been there for all of ten minutes, but it took over half an hour for the bar to resume its former state of relaxed calmness.

Once Gin had returned to his car, he redialed a number in his Recent Call history and stared blankly out the front window while he leaned against the door with his elbow hanging out. Surprisingly, the phone rang instead of going straight to voicemail and he didn't have to wait long before he was answered. _"What is it, Gin?"_

"Where have you been for the past two hours?" he demanded of Irish, but the other agent was silent and Gin narrowed his eyes in annoyance. "It seems like you've been places where you had to power off your cell."

" _Does that bother you?"_ Irish asked in a tone that was carefully respectful yet insolent at the same time.

He'd like that, wouldn't he? To think that his going off the grid without any forewarnings, excuses, or explanations was something that bothered Gin. He scoffed, "No matter. Just do the job you've been assigned and be on the lookout for Ringore. I've received word that he's physically incapable of traveling during the day from after dawn until sundown, and he's been steadily making his way north towards Tokyo. Depending on how much travel distance he covers tonight, he may get there as soon as early tomorrow evening."

" _I'll keep a lookout. Speaking of assignments, the one who accidentally poisoned that high school detective with an experimental memory-erasing drug was you, wasn't it?"_

Huh?

"What's this about?" he asked, thrown by the subject change.

" _Shinichi Kudo. Don't you remember?"_

That hadn't cleared anything up at all. Of course Gin knew who Shinichi Kudo was, but why was Irish asking about him? He had no reason for doing so and though his current undercover assignment had brought him in close proximity to Conan Edogawa, Irish did not qualify for the need-to-know clearance. His eyes narrowed further.

"I've dealt with a lot of people who've stumbled across the Organization's secret. I can't be bothered to remember every single one. Why? What makes this one so special?"

There was a pause on the other end before Irish said, _"No, it's nothing."_

Gin huffed. "Regardless, concentrate on your assignment," he said and hung up. Something was off, but he didn't have time to investigate Irish right now, not when he had a NOC list to retrieve or destroy before any aliens or Kudo got it first.

()()()()()

 _One day before Tanabata, still the same evening…_

Vodka looked down at the cards in his hand and then across the table at his opponent. She glanced up at him from her own hand and raised a questioning eyebrow. He quickly averted his eyes, hidden though they were by his sunglasses, and stared back down at this hand in question. The woman was a skilled opponent. She knew all the ins and outs of this game and one wrong move would be the end of him.

Sitting up straight, he met her angular blue eyes (through his sunglasses) and said, "Do you have any threes?"

A smirk graced the woman's lips. "No, go fish."

Vodka sighed and drew a new card from the pile while Kir giggled at him. It was her turn next and with only a quick glance down at her hand, she said, "Do you have a nine?"

He did, it was the card he'd just drawn and he dutifully handed it over for her to make her seventh pair in _this_ round of this particular game. They'd played six others beforehand and he'd only won one of them. "How are you so good at Go Fish?" he asked in dismay.

Kir burst out in a fit of laughter so loud, Vodka jumped. Who'd have thought Kir would be a loud, happy drunk? "Vodka, you know Go Fish is just luck and basic memorization. We're not even playing one of the card games that requires you to have a good poker face specifically because you'd have _no_ chance of winning. Got any queens?"

"You don't have to tell me twice, and no, go fish," Vodka muttered and drank some of his beer. Kir drew a card from the pile. "Is it really okay for us to just be hanging out here in my apartment playing card games and drinking alcohol while everyone else is out working to recover the NOC list?"

Kir gave a nonchalant shrug. "What's an agent to do? I'm not an executive and I've already put in all my hours for the week, so unless the Boss wants to start paying me overtime, I can't do anything. As for you, nobody's given you any work to do apart from being Gin's on-call driver, and he's driving himself tonight, so why worry about what you can't control? Haven't you ever heard that too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the pie?"

"No?"

She shrugged again and took a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle she'd brought with her. "Probably an American proverb. It means that too many people trying to work on one thing just ends up making a mess of things, so if the Organization doesn't need you right now, why not enjoy the time off while you can?"

Vodka stared meaningfully at the whiskey bottle in her hands. "You're gonna be sloshed with a nasty hangover tomorrow morning if you keep that up. You don't have my build to absorb all that alcohol. And do you have any tens?"

With cheeks already flushed pink, Kir grinned and raised the bottle in a toast. "No, go fish. If I'm not allowed to occasionally get drunk off my ass with a friend on my days off, then when else am I gonna do it?"

Vodka sighed and raised his beer glass to Kir's whiskey bottle with a clink. "Just so long as you don't mind Gin finding you here if he comes by to pick me up for work before you've left."

Kir snickered while he drew another card from the pile, which turned out to be another three that he paired off with the one in his hand. "He wouldn't even bat an eyelash. Maybe raise an eyebrow and warn us not to get distracted from our work, but he couldn't care less about coworker interpersonal relationships. Got any ones?"

'Unless they're his own,' Vodka amended internally, but otherwise, Kir was right on the mark about Gin. "Yes, I have a one."

()()()()()

 _Evening of Tanabata…_

Finally, they had some good news. After several stressful days and numerous dead-ends, the Organization was finally on its way to retrieve the missing NOC list from the serial murderer holed up at Tohto Tower. Gin was making his way over in that direction with Vodka now to provide additional backup if Irish needed it. Gin didn't expect him to, but it was a necessary precaution. Ringore was still loose and it would be the perfect time to strike when everyone thought they were home free.

His phone rang for the millionth time that day and he saw that the call was from Vermouth. He answered, "It's me. What is it?"

" _Bad news, Gin. The police and the kids just found Superintendent Matsumoto tied up and gagged in a boarded-up cabin in one of the park woods,"_ she said gravely. _"From what I can scope of the situation, it looks like he's been in there for several days."_

Gin's hand clenched convulsively around his phone. "Irish," he growled.

" _Looks that way and I'm afraid it gets worse. It seems that Irish has been secretly cooperating with that UV-nik bounty hunter that we've been after and he intends to sell the NOC data to him right at Tohto Tower."_

"… Got it," Gin said deadly quiet and hung up. His next words were to Vodka. "Alter your course and floor it to the nearest helipad. I'm calling Korn and Chianti to meet us there. We have to get to Tohto Tower _now_."

He could sense the question bubbling on his partner's tongue, but he ignored him as he dialed Chianti's number. She was probably driving too, but she was pretty good about always wearing her Bluetooth so she could drive hands-free.

" _Yo, what's up, Gin?"_

"You and Korn get to the Beika City helipad ASAP," Gin ordered. "Irish has betrayed us and we may need the extra firepower. Vodka and I will be there shortly, but if you get there first, get the helicopter ready. I'll explain more in-detail later."

" _The fuck-?!"_ was all Gin heard of Chianti's flabbergasted response before he cut that call too.

"Irish has _what_?" Vodka repeated, dumbfounded.

"The first call I got was from Vermouth, and that was why she called. It seems Irish not only kept Superintendent Matsumoto prisoner for several days while impersonating him, but plans to sell our NOC list to Ringore at Tohto Tower right after he reacquires it on behalf of the MiB," Gin bit out angrily. If there was one thing he hated more than anything in the world, it was traitors.

Vodka swallowed and asked, "You gonna kill him?"

Gin narrowed his eyes hatefully at the road ahead. "I haven't decided if I'm going to kill him on sight or force him to undergo the MiB's internal criminal justice system to formalize his execution first. We'll see how I'm feeling once he's in view."

Neither man spoke to each other for the rest of the drive to the helipad. Just as Gin had expected, Chianti and Korn had made it first and the black helicopter was ready and waiting for them.

"There you two are! Now what's this about Irish betraying the Men in Black?" Chianti demanded irately.

"I'll tell you on the way, just make sure you bring your rifle. Vodka, you're flying this thing," Gin said as he slammed the car door behind him and made his way to the helicopter.

Everyone piled in with Chianti and Korn in the back, and Vodka and himself in the front. While Vodka got them in the air, Gin filled in the other two on what Vermouth had told him regarding Irish. Chianti griped about it not being enough information, but he didn't know more than that, and it didn't bother him in the slightest. Where traitors were concerned, it was better to deal with them swiftly and aggressively. He didn't need to know the who, when, why, or how long of a traitor's true allegiance in order to capture and punish them for their transgressions.

"Aniki, we're coming up on Tohto Tower now, but it looks like there's a lot of police lights on at the base. I won't be able to land," Vodka informed him.

"And it's started raining," Gin commented idly as a few drops on the windows quickly turned into a downpour. Using the helicopter's equipment, he was able to pinpoint Irish's position on one of the Tower's outer stairways. "Looks like we won't be pulling off an extraction unless we want to try landing on the roof. Chianti, Korn, one of you douse the Tower's lights. I want a blackout."

"Roger that, one blacked-out Tower coming right up," Chianti said happily.

Korn opened the back gun portal to aim at the power breaker box within the structure on the floor just above where the legs ended. Flying this low was risky, but Gin was relying on the darkness, the rain, the helicopter's black paint job, and the police's preoccupation to cover for them until the Tower was dark. Korn fired through the metal struts, supports, and glass, struck his intended target with deadly accuracy, and Tohto Tower's lights went out one section at a time from the bottom up.

"Nice shot, Korn!" Chianti crowed and Korn nodded.

Checking back in with the equipment, Gin told Vodka, "Irish is on the south side just behind us and about twenty meters up. Bring us parallel to the Tower at his position so that Chianti can get a clear shot."

"Wait, I'm shooting him?" Chianti asked.

Gin was silent for a few seconds before he finally muttered, "Non-fatally."

"Cool, just give me some kind of signal and I'll do it," Chianti said, completely nonplussed, unlike Vodka who had been tense until Gin had made the clarification.

Vodka turned the helicopter around and rose higher into the air. He flicked a switch to turn on the white spotlight while Gin aimed it at the Tower, and he tapped Vodka's arm when he spotted Irish. Vodka nodded and stopped the helicopter's ascent. However, in the few seconds that Gin had taken his eyes off the tall agent, he'd disappeared. Frowning, Gin scanned through his extensive contact list for Irish's number and dialed it. Traitor or not, he couldn't have gotten far and if he was smart, he would answer his phone. A figure moved away from the stairs and when they stood up, Gin saw it was Irish withdrawing his phone from his back pocket.

The call connected, and Irish raised his left hand to shield his eyes as he glared into the helicopter's spotlight. _"It's me,"_ he said.

"How is it? Have you secured the memory card?" Gin asked casually. The state of the memory card was the first order of business.

He watched Irish holster the gun he was holding in his left hand and replace it with something tiny between his thumb and forefinger. Making use of the onboard tech, he zoomed in on the hand until the SD card filled the screen. Good, he hadn't sold the information to Ringore yet.

Gin sneered. "I can't really see you. Hold it out further."

There was a tapping sound on the rifle scope behind him where Chianti sat. Irish started to stretch out his arm.

"That's right, a little more," he encouraged until Irish's arm was fully extended. "Now!"

Chianti's rifle went off and shattered the memory card into fragments just before it lanced through Irish in the chest just right of center, missing his heart and spraying blood everywhere. Chianti whooped in delight as Irish stumbled back into the wall and crashed to the floor unmoving. Gin gave a satisfied nod in regard to Chianti's work.

"Aniki…" Vodka muttered worriedly.

"Don't worry, he won't die on us," Gin reassured his partner, knowing he didn't like participating in his vigilante crusades against traitors. "He'll face the MiB's internal criminal justice system for charges of kidnapping and treason."

Vodka's eyes widened in surprise momentarily behind his sunglasses and then he looked out the helicopter window. "But what about the police down below? Even more cars are arriving right this minute."

Gin scoffed, "He can use his neuralyzer to get past the police with ease and we'll nab him once he's out of their way. If he doesn't have it on him for some reason, we'll just do it ourselves, but he's _not_ getting away." Then he spoke with a nasty smirk directly to the downed Irish still visible on his screen. "It's what you deserve for being a filthy traitor."

Then something moved. Tiny, barely-noticeable, but definitely present. Gin zoomed in on the image and saw something white and round near the ground by Irish, like a shoe, slide out of sight behind a metal box next to the stairs.

"Someone's there next to Irish," he hissed.

"Eh? Are you sure?" Chianti asked.

"Is it Ringore?" Vodka added.

"Who else could it be?" Gin retorted. "Vodka, reposition us to get an open view of that staircase. If we can nail Ringore here, we won't have to track him down again later."

"Alright," his partner answered and while he did so, Gin kept his eyes focused on where Irish lay just in case Ringore came out of hiding now that the spotlight was off his co-conspirator.

He never did, and Vodka got the helicopter lined up, but there were some more metal boxes along the outside of the Tower's frame, so the line of sight back to the stairs wasn't as clear as Gin would have liked. It would have to do.

"Chianti, can you see Ringore?" Gin asked.

"No, but I can make out something moving under Irish's right arm and it's small enough it could be Ringore," she said.

Gin nodded slowly. "Right, I'll shine the spotlight on the area, and then you shoot. I don't need to remind you how fast he moves."

That she didn't throw a snappy comeback at him was a good tell of how seriously she was taking this situation. He turned on the spotlight and aimed it at the bottom of the stairs. Chianti only took a brief moment to line up the shot and then fired twice.

She swore after the second shot. "Fuck, I think I just killed Irish. Ringore used him as a shield."

Gin clicked his tongue in annoyance. "It'll be troublesome if we have to land. Vodka, use the gunner." It would not be the first time the MiB had to restore a national monument that was destroyed due to alien activity.

"Roger that," Vodka said, and he flew the helicopter back to its original position, aimed at the stairs, and pulled the trigger.

The results were immediate. Metal sparked and sheared away, and the glass windows fragmented into shards. Gin watched the stairs like a hawk for any sign of movement from their adversary, but there was nothing. They weren't going to be able to get him like this.

"Hold your fire a moment," Gin commanded. "Let's give him a chance to make a break for it."

Sure enough, after Vodka released the triggering mechanism, a small figure in blue darted out of hiding and took off up the stairs.

" _There_ he is. Continue," he said.

The hail of gunfire resumed and chased the bounty hunter further up the Tower. Vodka operated both the helicopter's and gun turret's controls while Gin kept the spotlight focused on Ringore for his partner's benefit. An almost-steady stream of bullets trailed after Ringore, just barely missing him, and then he darted into the uppermost observation deck. The helicopter circled the deck's entirety and shot out all the windows, but even with the spotlight and the night vision imaging zoom-in feature, they couldn't see Ringore anymore. He'd found a new burrow to wedge himself into.

"Aniki, what should we do?" Vodka asked, letting up on the trigger again.

He was thinking of that. "Chianti, smoke him out," he ordered.

"Okay!" she said happily and started rummaging around in her equipment bag. She made an 'aha!' of triumph and Gin could hear the series of clicks as she loaded her ammunition of choice.

"What are you using?" he asked.

"Tear gas!" she declared and fired through one of the destroyed windows.

It went off almost immediately and the smoky substance spread rapidly across the observation deck. "Thank you, Chianti, for further decreasing our visibility in the dark in the rain," he commented drily as he turned his attention on the view screen.

Even with the night vision setting, the tear gas still made visibility poor enough that he needed the spotlight to scan the area. He focused his search on the exit points and kept his eyes peeled for organic movement.

"There we are," he said smugly as he watched the small alien continue to ascend the Tower steps. "Force him to the top. Not even UV-niks can survive falls from _this_ high up."

Once again, Vodka resumed firing the gun turret while maintaining a steady, upward rotation of the helicopter, even when the stairwell disappeared within the structure again. He continued until their quarry had finally been flushed out onto the rooftop.

A maniac grin split Gin's face. "Finally, the mouse has been cornered. Go up and attack him from the roof. He's got nowhere left to hide."

"Roger," Vodka said, also smiling in anticipation.

His partner took the helicopter higher into the stormy sky and then brought it into position directly overhead the top of Tohto Tower. However, just as Vodka started realigning the turret gun to fire on Ringore, Gin saw him dive head first off the roof of the Tower and plummet to his death.

"What?! He jumped!" Chianti exclaimed in astonishment.

"Hnn, accepting his fate of no escape, huh?" Gin commented.

Committing suicide over facing an enemy wasn't how he would have chosen to go out if it were him, but the end result was the same. Unfortunately, Ringore's preferred choice of death meant his body would splatter all over the pavement where those police cars were, so they would _still_ have to bring the helicopter down to erase all those memories, even if they didn't assist in the clean-up. He was still trying to work out the logistics when he saw something very small and fast out of the corner of his eye shooting straight up into the air at them. He turned to get a better look, but it disappeared. A second later, he heard something slam into the tail end of the helicopter followed by an explosive shudder that rocked through the aircraft.

"We've been hit!" Korn exclaimed.

Indeed, the entire thing began to shake, and the control panel started beeping incessantly.

"Great! Now what?!" Chianti snapped acidly.

Vodka was pressing toggles and switches, but nothing seemed to respond and he shook his head in despair. "It's no use; I can't control it anymore!"

"We have no choice; get us out of here," Gin told him.

"Alright…" Vodka answered and began trying to chart a course to a safe place to land.

They were dropping at an alarming rate and Gin could smell burning metal and electricity coming from the back, but he risked one last alarmed glance back at the Tower. What… what the hell was that? Ringore had jumped off the roof and as hardy as his species was, he should have died. There was no getting around that, so what had attacked them so quickly just now?

"Gin, this thing's breaking apart too fast! I can't land it and it's gonna explode any second!" Vodka panicked.

"Everyone, grab your parachutes and bail out now!" he yelled.

Vodka abandoned his valiant efforts to steady the helicopter to retrieve his parachute. The doors were opened and only after Gin heard his three team members jump did he follow suit. He was not a moment too soon. The helicopter exploded and split in two with the majority of the wreckage creating a fiery trajectory towards the outskirts of a park and a much smaller part going in the complete opposite direction. He averted his eyes from the destroyed aircraft and searched anxiously for his comrades, but it was dark, it was still raining, and they were dressed in black as he was. He couldn't see anything like this. Suddenly, he saw the faint outline of a parachute open up below him, then a second and a third, and he released an exhale of relief before opening his own. All of them had survived and were all close by. It wouldn't be too difficult to find each other and hopefully no one would get stuck on the landing.

As Gin slowly drifted down to Earth and made tiny adjustments to his landbound trajectory, he felt something in his pocket vibrate. It was his phone which he withdrew, glanced briefly at the caller ID, frowned slightly, and answered it. "Yeah, it's me. What is it Vermouth?"

" _Oh good, you're not dead,"_ she said lightly, but there was some relief in her tone. _"I saw the helicopter crash in the park and the resulting fireball of an explosion from the highway. What happened?"_

"Ringore happened," he growled. "Chianti destroyed the SD card with the MiB's NOC list, so our secrets are safe for the moment, but Ringore was already at Tohto Tower ready to receive the information from that traitorous bastard, Irish. He's dead by the way-"

" _-I figured,"_ she interrupted.

Gin scowled. "I was _going_ to leave him alive for MiB Internal Affairs to pass judgment on instead, but Ringore used Irish's body as a shield when we tried to get a clearer shot and we ended up killing him."

" _You sound very put out,"_ she commented sarcastically.

He ignored it. "We chased Ringore all the way to the top of Tohto Tower and were just about to shoot him down too when he jumped off the roof. Not a minute later, something launched straight up into the air at us and struck the helicopter in the tail end. At that point, we lost control and it was all we could do to get away and get out before we suffered fiery deaths. Vodka, Chianti, and Korn are all alive too. I'm still not sure what attacked the helicopter so suddenly like that and I wasn't able to confirm Ringore's death. How close are you to Tohto Tower right now?"

" _Close enough. I can be there in about fifteen minutes to scope out the situation and maybe erase some memories if that turns out to be necessary."_

"Good. I'll be waiting for a status update," he said stiffly and hung up before she had the chance to try and worsen his mood. However, his phone started ringing again immediately after. He rolled his eyes and answered with an annoyed, "What?"

The shriek on the other end _definitely_ wasn't Vermouth's. _"Don't 'what' me! I saw a black helicopter crash and explode! I was terrified you'd been killed! I can_ _ **still**_ _see the smoke from here!"_

"S-Sherry?!" Gin gasped. "I thought you were Vermouth calling me back to complain about how rudely I hung up on her."

The line on the other end went quiet and he imagined Sherry squinting her eyes suspiciously when she said, _"Why were you talking to Vermouth?"_

"She saw the explosion too and called for the same reason as you to make sure I wasn't dead," he answered bluntly. "She's also close to Tohto Tower, so she's going to call me back to give me an update on the situation over there."

" _What_ _ **did**_ _happen?"_ Sherry asked.

Gin very quickly brought Sherry up to speed. "Irish betrayed the Men in Black. He impersonated Superintendent Matsumoto after kidnapping him and Vermouth discovered he was going to sell the NOC list to a bounty hunter named Ringore that we've been chasing for days. Long story short, the NOC list's SD card was destroyed, Irish is dead, and Ringore is presumed dead, but the helicopter was attacked from out of nowhere, so I have no idea what's going on."

" _Vermouth told you about Superintendent Matsumoto?"_

One eyebrow rose questioningly. " _You_ know about the Superintendent?"

" _The kids found some beetles with tape in a 'v' shape on their wings, Dr. Agasa deduced it was a call for help based on the name of the Beatles band's fifth album. They decided to take him seriously and followed through on investigating the source of the beetles which is how we ended up finding Superintendent Matsumoto tied up in a wood cabin in Beika Forest,"_ Sherry explained. _"Vermouth was there with a motorbike, so she must have found him around the same time we did."_

"I'd like to know what tipped her off to be suspicious," Gin grumbled.

" _You can ask her that yourself when she calls you back,"_ Sherry said shortly.

He groaned, "Sherry, don't be like that. My feet have not even touched solid ground yet and I need somebody else to scope out the situation immediately. Vermouth just happens to be in the best position to do that right now."

" _Yes, yes, I hear you,"_ she said dismissively. _"Kudo was investigating this case too, so I'll let you know if he discovered anything relevant as usual. Goodni-"_

"-Sherry, wait!" he blurted out before she could hang up. She paused expectantly mid-sentence, and he felt his cheeks flush. "I… Thank you for worrying about me."

Sherry was silent for a little while before she said in a much softer tone _, "Well, what else am I going to do?_ _ **Not**_ _worry?"_ Gin smiled, but she had more to say. _"Oh, I guess it's not as important anymore, but Kudo knew our NOC list was in jeopardy. Vermouth told him yesterday, and I suspect Irish might have found out about his secret identity."_

Gin's eyes narrowed. "Vermouth told him, huh…" he repeated quietly.

" _I thought it odd too. I don't know why she would do that, but then I've never been able to figure her out,"_ she sighed heavily.

"It's definitely suspicious," he agreed and then smirked. "I love you, Sherry."

His shrunken scientist instantly began to stutter in embarrassment _, "H-Hey! Don't_ _ **do**_ _that!"_

Gin's smirk widened further. "What? Profess my feelings?"

" _Say them so suddenly! I wasn't ready!"_

"But I enjoy seeing you flustered."

" _You're not seeing me at all!"_

Gin shrugged nonchalant. "Hearing you is just as good."

" _Well, I'm_ _ **not**_ _going to say 'I love you' back!"_ she retorted.

"And yet I believe you just did," he commented, using her own words against her.

" _Goodnight Gin!"_ Sherry said and cut the call, no doubt blushing as red as a rose.

Gin chuckled and returned his phone to his pocket. Getting Sherry riled up was always something he enjoyed, especially when it made her embarrassed. She really was too cute for her own good. Still, what Sherry had told him about Vermouth was worrisome. Why did she tell Kudo about the NOC list? For all her faults, she was still a loyal member of the Organization. Was it some weird attempt of stacking the cards in their favor to prevent hostile aliens from retrieving the data first? It was possible. Getting the NOC list back from Conan Edogawa would have been much easier than if someone like Ringore had gotten it.

He was quickly approaching the ground, so he scanned the area for a good place to set down without getting stuck in a tree or in the middle of a road. He saw a mostly-empty parking lot and aimed for that. His feet touched the black asphalt and he had to take a few running steps before the parachute stopped catching air and allowed him to stop completely. He had just finished getting out of the harness when his cellphone rang _again_.

This time, it was Vodka. _"Aniki, where are you?"_

"I landed in a parking lot for some kind of store. I can't tell what yet, but there's an office building next door. What about you?" Gin asked as he held the phone to his ear with his shoulder and used his hands to start gathering up the parachute.

" _I'm with Chianti in some kids' playground. We haven't found Korn yet, but she's calling him now. I see an office building a little way down the street to the right, but I don't see a store parking lot."_

Gin glanced up. "The office building is on my right side facing the street, so the parking lot I'm in is probably hidden behind it. I'll come over and meet you two since-" a sudden outburst of cackling laughter through the phone caused him to stop and stare before he said, quite calmly, "Vodka… why does Chianti sound like she's dying…?"

" _Uh… it seems like Korn might have ended up getting stuck on the roof of a parking garage…"_ Vodka answered uncertainly.

He let the silence carry his unimpressed mood before he said, "I'm not going to look for him. He'll have to come to us if he wants to regroup."

" _Once Chianti calms down enough to listen, I'll ask her to relay the message to him. I guess I'll see you soon then?"_

"Ah," Gin agreed and hung up on his partner.

He reached the sidewalk and made sure to very carefully look both ways into the dark street before crossing. Rainy nights in the city were always treacherous, but especially when wearing all-black clothes. The water accumulated on the roads and reflected the light cast by everything, including street lamps, building signs, and cars. Wearing a black long coat did well to hide him from prey and predators alike but made him more of a hidden target for reckless drivers. Gin scowled and tucked the collapsed parachute under one arm to tug the brim of his hat further down his face with his free hand. He hated rain. It always meant an extra half-hour's worth of blow-drying his hair after he got home.

It was raining so heavily that he barely heard his phone ring for the fourth time that evening, but he managed to catch it in time. "Yes, it's me. Who is it now?"

" _Now, Gin, you were the one who told me to call you back with an update,"_ Vermouth reprimanded.

That did not make him feel any better about receiving a call from Vermouth of all people, but he was interested in what she'd discovered. "Go on," he said.

" _I've checked around the place, but I saw no signs of any aliens being present at Tohto Tower."_

"Impossible. Even if Ringore somehow survived the fall from the top of Tohto Tower, there should still be blood or imprints or something," Gin insisted.

" _I was very thorough in my investigation and there's nothing,"_ she repeated. _"The only beings here are the police officers, the human serial killer culprit and the one who was going to be wrongly blamed for the murders, Irish's dead body, Ran Mouri, and Conan Edogawa."_

"Con- what?! He was there?"

" _And he seems pretty injured. He had a bandage around his head, one on his cheek, and there was blood on the left shoulder of his jacket,"_ she continued.

Gin's jaw fell slack and he stared blankly ahead of him. "I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna accidentally end up killing him one of these days," he finally muttered aloud after several minutes of stunned silence.

" _Oh?"_

"I didn't know he was there. He must have been after Irish," he continued. "That's twice now that I've nearly killed him because he's gotten in the way of our work." He frowned suddenly and glanced askance at his phone out of the corner of his eye. "And speaking of Irish, how did you discover that he was going to sell the NOC list to Ringore?"

Vermouth only tsked at him and said _, "A secret makes a woman, a woman."_

Gin rolled his eyes. "Fine, don't tell me," he said and hung up on her again. The conversation had carried on long enough that it had brought him within sight range of Vodka and Chianti, the former of whom waved at him. He raised his own hand to let him know he saw the signal and walked over to join them. "How's Korn's situation?" he asked Vodka, because Chianti was still on the phone.

"He was all the way up there," Vodka said, pointing to the roof of a parking garage barely visible through the trees just south of their position. "So he's probably close to the ground floor by now."

Gin nodded in acknowledgment. "Good. I can update 'that person' on the current situation while we wait for him."

Unfortunately, the downpour was such that the trees provided negligible cover, so he took off his hat and used it as an umbrella for his phone as he composed the message to 'that person' discussing everything that had happened at Tohto Tower. He pressed the 'send' button and replaced the soaked hat on his equally-soaked head.

"Man, what a mess, huh? We saved the NOC list, but it looks like we're back to square one on Ringore," Vodka sighed.

Gin gave an angry huff and shoved his hands into his coat pockets. "He wasn't even there."

"Eh?"

"I was on the phone with Vermouth just before I arrived here. Ringore was never at the Tower and the one we _thought_ was Ringore was actually Conan Edogawa," Gin explained.

"Conan Edogawa? Are you serious?" Vodka asked in alarm.

"Unfortunately," he bit out. He started feeling around for his cigarettes and matches in his pockets.

"But we could have accidentally killed him."

"Yes." He kept the burning match sheltered from the rain with his hand and then the brim of his hat protected the end of the cigarette once it was lit.

"And he nearly killed _us!_ "

"I _know_."

"… Did Sherry know?"

Gin shook his head and breathed out some smoke. "No, she saw the helicopter explode and called while I was still up in the air to make sure I wasn't dead. She would have told me then if she knew where Kudo had been."

Vodka nodded slowly in agreement and then held out his hand. "May I borrow a match?"

Gin wordlessly handed him the matchbox and watched him light his own cigarette. Chianti finished her phone call with Korn shortly after and informed them he'd be there soon. Gin filled her in on what happened at Tohto Tower which caused her to swear profusely in frustration ("All that work we put into tracking the little fucker and he didn't even show up?!"). He very much sympathized with her feelings on the matter even though he was less vocal about it. At last, Korn showed up with his sniper rifle bag under one arm, his parachute under the other, and looking sheepish for making them wait so long.

Chianti affectionately punched his shoulder once he'd rejoined the group and he gave her a brief smile before looking around at them all and saying, "How are we getting back to the cars?"

The only sound that immediately followed this question from the oldest member present was the pattering of rain on the leaves, sidewalk, playground equipment, hats, bags, and jackets. That calm, tranquil sound was interrupted momentarily by one well-placed, despairing groan of "Fuck…" from the group's highest-ranking member.

* * *

 _Well, lookie here. Bourbon got a cameo before his officially-canon appearance. Gin's really not a people person (and not just because he keeps murdering them).  
_

 _Also Kir appeared again, yay! I like Kir and I wish her role in the canon story hadn't been usurped by Bourbon. Anyway, like most things in this story, her appearance in this chapter was unplanned. Since Gin was the focus in the previous section and needed to be the focus of the next section in a different time point, I felt like I needed to add a different character to focus on to break it up for a bit which is how I came up with using Vodka (especially since he wasn't with Gin when he made that call to Irish), but I had a difficult time figuring out what he could do until, bam, it hit me. Have him bonding with the only other codenamed member I haven't used this chapter who could potentially be available for such relaxation._

 _Surprise, surprise, the next chapter is NOT based on a Black Organization episode, but it's also not going to be filler. It's actually going to be plot-relevant and focus on Haibara. Shocking, I know, but Gin was very active in this one, so I feel the need to balance it out and give Haibara some love._


	13. Phantom Thief Kid vs the Strongest Vault

**Author's Note: Oh hey look! A new chapter that took me less than a month to write! Behold, a completely original chapter with plot! Also, I didn't realize this until several days after I'd posted the previous chapter, but this wanna-be novel (seriously, this entire thing is already 279 pages) is already a year old. I can hardly believe it myself, and even crazier yet, by my current estimate, this story is already about halfway done. Crazy.**

* * *

Phantom Thief Kid vs the Strongest Vault

"' _ **Phantom Thief Kid has sent a challenge notice to his old rival Jirokichi Suzuki'**_ , huh?" Haibara read off the front of the morning's newspaper. "Well, I guess that means the 'Kid Killer' will be making an appearance in the papers again shortly as well. You'd think someone who believes his life is in jeopardy if his face appears in the newspaper again would be a bit more cautious about letting his alter ego be printed in the paper as well."

"Now Ai, you know Shinichi can't resist a case, no matter how risky and it's not his fault that Phantom Thief Kid is so smart and quick that he can't take the time to set Mouri up to reveal the truth," Dr. Agasa said as he set a plate of fried eggs and toast on the table next to her.

"It has nothing to do with timing and everything to do with his ego," Haibara retorted acidly as she bit into the toast and quickly flipped through the rest of the newspaper. "He's gotten better, but he still can't resist showboating if he thinks he can get away with it. He even did that with Pisco, remember? A supposed _member_ of the Black Organization? He's lucky that Gin had to kill him otherwise he could have blown his cover _and_ mine back then."

"I guess that's true," Dr. Agasa agreed slowly. "So does it say when this new Kid heist will take place?"

"Nope, they didn't print that information this time. I guess it hasn't been deciphered from the note yet. Well, I'm sure Kudo will figure it out soon enough since he likes breaking codes so much. Maybe I should get him a codebook for his birthday next year," she said and slipped off the barstool.

"Oi, Ai, where are you going? You haven't finished your breakfast yet."

Haibara waved her hand idly in his general direction. "I'm just going out to pick up a few tabloids; I won't be long. You can leave it in the microwave for me if you'd like."

"The tabloids?" the Professor repeated blankly.

"Yes, how else do you think I keep up on alien news? I may not be an active member of the MiB right now, but I still like being _somewhat_ aware of what's going on," she said as she finished putting on her shoes and left the house.

It was a clear, bright day outside and Haibara could tell it was going to be uncomfortably hot later since it was already so warm this early in the day. She glanced at the Kudo house next door, glared at the windows, and turned down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. She hated feeling like she was under Akai's scrutiny every time she left Dr. Agasa's residence, and he was doing a very poor job of coming off as _not_ -creepy. In fact, if Gin hadn't told her that Akai's death had been faked, she'd have suspected he was some kind of alien infiltrator spying on her every move. He had always been a socially-awkward introvert, but was he really so bad at being human that even refugee aliens like Dr. Agasa seemed more normal? And then there was that incident at Ikkaku Rock…

Haibara frowned and crossed her arms over chest as she walked. When Akai had moved to confront the killer after he'd grabbed Ayumi, she had felt it: the blood lust of the hunt. And this was the second time she had felt it from him. The first time was during their first meeting with 'Subaru Okiya', but she was just as confused then as she was now about _why_. In every previous instance, she had only sensed that terrifying hunting blood lust coming from beings, human or otherwise, who had meant to do her harm, such as Vermouth. However, in both instances with Akai, she had not been the target of such intensity nor had he expressed any remotely violent behavior. Even when the killer's knife was turned on him at Ikkaku Rock, he just blocked the maneuver and that was it.

She'd never really understood how her sensing ability worked, but had accepted it as a specific but highly-reliable sense of intuition that had accurately protected her for five consecutive years. Now, she had no clue what was going on. It seemed like her sensing ability was maybe starting to generalize or weaken since the target apparently no longer needed to be her nor did the hunter have to be violent, but then why did she still not sense anything with the regular criminals they encountered? Why was it deciding to pick up on Akai of all people?

Why it was changing or how, she had no idea and that was exactly why she hadn't told Gin yet either. Doing so would only alarm him and there was no need for him to take action right now. She'd wait and see how things played out first for a while and see if she could figure out if her hunting sense was really changing or if there was something causing it to act up.

Haibara's introspective thoughts had taken her all the way to the business streets and she refocused on the task that had brought her out here in the first place. She turned right and walked down the street, casually taking in all the brightly-colored displays in the windows and greeting all the store owners she passed if they were close enough. It was already shaping up to be quite an active day.

"Ah Ai, there you are!" a voice called out to her.

She looked up a little further ahead and saw a tanned, brown-haired youth waving merrily at her. Haibara smiled jogged up to meet him. "Hi Soshi, you look cheerful today; did something good happen?"

By all appearances, Soshi Yano was an energetic, charming second-year college student majoring in mechanical engineering and working part-time at a ramen restaurant during the evenings and this magazine stand on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The reality was that he was a young Fiddlesprocket named Ketz that had sought refuge on Earth with the rest of his family five years ago when his home planet became part of the intergalactic equivalent of World War I's infamous 'No Man's Land'. He didn't actually know that she knew he was a Fiddlesprocket, of course. He was very well-adjusted for an alien refugee and only an experienced MiB agent would know what to look for.

Soshi grinned broadly down at her and said, "Yes, I got a promotion last night at the ramen restaurant! Starting tonight, I begin training as a Prep Line cook!"

"Congratulations, that's wonderful! I'm sure you'll do well," Haibara said happily. These were the moments that she treasured: seeing alien refugees living and thriving on a new planet in spite of all the hardships and challenges they'd faced along the way. It was easy to forget that when you worked for a law enforcement agency, even the Men in Black.

"Thanks Ai! I knew you'd be coming today, so I couldn't wait to tell you. See anything that catches your eye this time?"

With the pleasantries exchanged, Haibara turned her greenish-blue eyes to the rows of assorted magazines on the back wall of the stall and quickly scanned the front pages of the tabloids. She came to this magazine stall at least once a month to check for alien news. Occasionally, Soshi found something that she'd missed, but despite being an alien himself, he still hadn't caught the common thread of her tabloid searches. It was surprising how clueless he was for being a human college-grade engineering student.

"How about that one?" she said, pointing to a magazine with the words 'Invisible Robber' and a black human outline with a red question mark inside it.

Soshi picked it up and hummed curiously before handing it to her. "You sure like the weird ones, don't you?"

"Yup," she agreed and now that she could see the full cover, she could read the entire title: _**'Invisible Robber Strikes Again! Police left baffled!'**_

She raised an eyebrow at the sensational title but opened the magazine to the story in question. Perhaps the contents would provide more context for why the story was written here instead of in the newspaper.

 _At 7:30 last night, July 18_ _th_ _, the convenience store at the corner of Hatsune and Miko became the latest victim in this series of convenience store robberies, with the first occurring on July 12_ _th_ _at 6:40, the second on July 13_ _th_ _at 9:15, and the third on July 15_ _th_ _at 5:22. As with the previous two incidents, the clerk working the register doesn't remember anything up to an hour after the time of the theft, but the footage caught on the security camera reveals the exact same MO as the previous incidents and is even stranger than the victim's lack of memory._

 _With no other customers present at the register or coming into the store, the store clerk, who wishes to remain anonymous, suddenly stiffened, and a bag literally appeared out of thin air,_ _ **hovering**_ _in the air. The clerk seemed to take no notice of this oddity and proceeded to empty the money from the till into the bag. Once the register was empty, the clerk walked out from behind the counter and set the bag on the floor. And just as suddenly as the bag had appeared, it disappeared in an instant, again, with no other customers present in the footage._

 _The police sent to investigate the crime scene believe there was some kind of trick involved but were unable provide any speculative answers for how it was pulled off. Perhaps the first convenience store robbery could have been a trick, but with three other robberies successfully pulled off in the same manner? Clearly, this crime could only have been committed with magic. Maybe the police should start investigating that angle instead of fruitlessly trying to figure out a so-called trick that cannot have been done by normal human means._

Haibara smirked. 'Normal human means', huh? She then smiled up at Soshi. "This is the one I want," she said as she handed him the money for the magazine.

"No problem, Ai. It's a pleasure to have your business as always," he said cheerily.

She waved goodbye to him and turned to walk back in the direction of home, her eyes once more glued to the article. Investigating a magic lead would be as fruitless an endeavor as trying to figure out what kind of trick a normal human could have used to pull this off. Any MiB agent worth their salt could recognize this was an alien criminal at work and probably the only reason it hadn't been discovered yet was because the crime spree was recent, small-time, and occurred during the continued pursuit of Ringore. In fact, his arrest had occurred just yesterday, ironically at the time of the theft. Compared to that, Haibara could hardly blame the MiB for not noticing a small string of weird convenience store robberies.

Still, even though she could usually recognize the work of aliens when she saw it, she was a scientist by profession and couldn't instantly tell what kind of alien was responsible for the crime the way the older, more-experienced field agents could. She was a little curious, but knew better than to get involved and was just about to consider letting the MiB handle it when they were no longer so busy when she looked up and found herself staring at the front gate of the Kudo house. Haibara jumped and looked around behind her to Dr. Agasa's house. She'd been so lost in thought that she had overshot her destination by one neighbor. She started to backtrack, but something made her pause and stare at one of the curtained windows on the second floor. It was the feeling of being watched. Shuichi Akai…

She scowled at the window for good measure and stomped off back to the Professor's. There was no getting away from him. He couldn't reveal himself to be alive because then the 'Black Organization' would kill him – and Kir for being his accomplice – and he wouldn't move away because he was in the perfect position to watch over his dead girlfriend's little sister and assist Conan with anything he needed. Unless something changed, the only way she'd be able to escape his scrutiny was for her mission to end, and who knew how long _that_ would take?

Thoroughly vexed, Haibara slammed open the front door, startling the Arquillian, and headed directly for the microwave where the rest of her breakfast remained. "Ai, is everything alright?" Dr. Agasa asked tentatively.

Haibara stuffed the tabloid under her arm and retrieved the plate with a huff. "Akai has got to go. I'll be in the basement lab. Please don't bother me," she muttered mutinously as she retreated downstairs with her food and her reading.

She locked the door behind her for good measure and tossed the tabloid onto the desk next to the computer. She sat down in the chair and turned on the computer. While she was waiting for it to start up, she set her food down and grabbed one of her notepads lying around, the page of which had diagrams of complex organic compounds in both _cis_ and _trans_ configurations. Right, she'd been working on the Apoptoxin antidote last night before going to bed. She ripped that page off and stuck it in the drawer with the rest of her notes on the antidote, then she grabbed a pen and started jotting down new notes on the paper. It seemed likely that if the convenience store robberies had gone on this long without being stopped, then the culprits were likely to strike a fourth time, and she had to figure out where, when, and who if she was going to stop it. That meant first compiling a list of all the known data points in the previous three cases.

Haibara referred back to the article several times to make sure she had all the information about the third robbery and then she turned to the Internet for information about the previous two. Except for the robberies occurring in the evening, there was no pattern in the time of the thefts, but she _had_ noticed that the robberies were occurring at increasingly-lengthy intervals with the first two being a day apart, the next robbery occurring two days later, and the latest occurring three days after the previous. Unless the culprit suddenly decided to break the pattern, she expected the next convenience store robbery would occur in four days, coincidentally on the same day that the Phantom Thief Kid would be challenging Advisor Suzuki. A little half-smirk flitted briefly across her face. At least this string of robberies won't spontaneously end with a dead body since murder-magnet Conan Edogawa will be elsewhere.

So, she had a tentative when, but not a where, and that was what she hoped to figure out from looking at the other three robberies. She pulled up a web browser and started a google search of 'invisible convenience store robber'. Just as she'd hoped, the search had turned up more articles of the same caliber that last night's robbery had been printed in, and a quick glance at their publication dates confirmed they were the ones she wanted. Haibara opened up the article about the first one in the half-hearted hope that there might be more detailed information about the case since the strangeness was new at the time.

There was a _little_ bit more, like the cash clerk remembered feeling a sudden draft of air and a sharp prick on the back of her neck right before the moment she lost her memory when the theft had occurred, but nothing beyond that. Haibara found the address for the convenience store and opened up a maps tab on the web browser to pinpoint its exact location. She added in the address for the most recent one too to compare the two and noted that the first was southwest from the last one at a 225-degree angle. She copied the store addresses of the other two robberies to plot them on her map and then did a double-take. They made a single perfect straight line. She even zoomed in on the line to measure the individual slope of each section between the four points, but the result was the same. From their starting point, the robber was hitting the convenience stores at an exact 45-degree angle in a northeastern direction. If she extended the slope of the existing line along the positive x- and y-axes, then she could calculate the robber's next target and be there to intercept them.

It was simple enough math to do and yet, as Haibara started writing out the equation to solve, she felt uneasy. These robberies… there was a pattern to their timing and their location and it wasn't even a difficult pattern to solve, but what was the reason for it? The robber was clearly successful at accomplishing its objective with the regular police unable to catch them, so then why were they making it so easy to predict their movements? Rather than stealing because they needed to, it was almost like they had a set schedule to follow for which place they had to rob and when. Why though? Why in a northeastern direction and why convenience stores if the robber was just following orders? With their skills, they could easily rob places with a better payout than the loose bills of a convenience store register's till. It just didn't make any sense.

Haibara used her equation to draw the line on the map and zoomed in on the screen to find the robber's next target. She found it, and it was only a couple miles away too. She could probably even take a bus, so she wouldn't have to worry about bothering the Professor into giving her a ride. Now she just had to figure out what she would be up against, so that she could prepare an adequate defense. Easy, right? She wished. Haibara sighed and started the hidden software program that would activate her connection to the MiB's vast database network. While she waited, she pondered over the situation that would be waiting for her. If she had figured it out this fast, then somebody in the police department had probably done the same and there would be some cops stationed at the convenience store in question to try and prevent a fifth robbery. _She_ would need to make sure she brought her neuralyzer in case things got out of hand.

The computer icon at the bottom righthand corner of the screen finally turned green. She clicked on the icon and inputted the network ID and password on the login sidebar. The combination was accepted, a loading bar filled half the screen, and then finally a new program opened up with another login screen. The background was black and the text read 'Men in Black' in white font with two empty bars below that read 'User ID' and 'Password' below. Haibara typed in her codename and her password then hit 'Enter'. The computer took a few minutes before ultimately deciding to accept the entry and gave her access to the MiB database network. She navigated her way to the alien species data records and scanned her options on the search filters, frowning slightly.

There were millions of different alien species currently living on Earth, many of them with abilities so incredible they could only be described as magic, and all Haibara knew about her alien thieves was that they were invisible and employing some type of mind control that resulted in an hour's worth of memory loss afterward. Oh, and choosing their targets by traveling in a northeastern direction may or may not be a relevant factor. She knew that if she called Gin and gave him all the relevant data about the case, he'd have an answer for her in an instant because he was the same work-obsessed weirdo as Kudo that way, but she didn't want his help. She wanted to solve this mystery on her own without having to rely on someone else. Haibara sighed heavily and leaned back in her chair, staring blankly at the screen. Well, she had three days left to discover the culprit's identity. She had time.

()()()()()

 _Three days later…_

Since Haibara had no idea the exact time the alien robbers were likely to strike except 'evening', she had arrived at the location at 3:30 way ahead of schedule. She had planned on needing more time to lose Akai just in case he decided to resume his new favorite hobby of Sherry-stalking. He needed to stop. His being 'dead' was doing her no favors. Fortunately, she had brought plenty of reading material and snacks to prevent boredom while she waited and there was a book store right across the street that she could park herself in without conspicuously waiting out in the open.

At around five, Haibara spotted the police officers that had arrived to stake out the location. They weren't dressed like cops of course, but they were clearly waiting around for something to happen. She didn't recognize them, but that was probably because she ended up spending most of her time with the Section One officers anyway. They'd probably recognize _her_ though. How many times had she and the rest of the kids gone to the police station to give witness statements now? It was some ridiculously high number is what it was. Still, Haibara reached into her pants pocket and patted the neuralyzer hidden there. If she needed to, she would not hesitate to use it on them.

With the police here, it would be smart to maintain a more watchful vigil and make sure she was ready at the slightest sign of trouble. From her other pocket, she pulled out two mini-flashlights with rainbow-striped tissue paper taped over the bulb end. She turned one on and a rainbow-colored spot appeared on the far wall. She turned it off and did the same with the other. Both flashlights were working and if she was right about her culprit, they would be all she would need to find them. There was one other device she needed now that the stakeout had officially begun. From the pocket with the neuralyzer, Haibara pulled out a jam jar full of water with something yellow at the bottom and unscrewed the lid. She wrinkled her nose at the smell – like swamp water – and carefully stuck her hand in. Her fingers grasped the slippery yellow thing and she held fast as she pulled it out. It was a small, yellow, ugly, leech-like fish known as a Babelfish and it was simultaneously the most inexplicable and dead useful thing she'd come across in working for the Men in Black. When she put it in her ear, she could literally understand any alien language because the Babelfish had the biological capacity to translate them. She was sure the evolution of the mechanism in the parasitic fish hadn't originally occurred with the intention of being a universal translator, but it was a very useful ability. The MiB had a whole department dedicated to the careful maintenance and care of the Babelfish breeding colonies, and since Babelfish eggs were apparently the caviar of the galaxy, the Organization also had a financial incentive to keep large, healthy Babelfish populations.

The yellow fish wiggled between her fingers and Haibara frowned at it in disgust. She appreciated their usefulness, she'd even cross-trained with the Babelfish Husbandry Department for six months, but seeing their creepy little sucker mouths and knowing that it was going into her ear always squicked her out. She cringed, closed her eyes, and shoved it into her ear as quick as possible. It was cold and slimy and it made a sickening squelching noise going in that nearly activated her gag reflex. When she was fairly certain she wasn't about to throw up anymore, she removed her hand and shivered in disgust. Useful, but _so_ gross. Now if any nearby aliens spoke at all, she would hear them, invisible or not.

Armed with her detection equipment, she watched the front door of the convenience store intently, confirming that every time it opened, somebody either entered or exited. It was tedious work and it was easy to get distracted (literally _everything else_ was more interesting during such assignments), but she was determined to remain focused. The MiB had enough going on right now, she could handle this one little thieving crime spree on her own.

It wasn't until 5:57 that something finally happened.

A large crowd of people walked past the store's entrance and she saw the door open, but not one of those pairs of legs entered. Haibara was suddenly alert and immediately left the book store. A quick glance at the undercover cops in the beige sedan told her they hadn't noticed the convenience store door opening on its own. It was probably a good thing; normal police had an unfortunate tendency of getting in the way during critical do-or-die MiB matters. She crossed the street as quickly as she dared without looking suspicious and entered the convenience store.

The amount of noise within was so loud it was nearly deafening and then she discovered to her shock that there was hardly anyone present in the store at the moment and none of the customers were moving their lips. With a growing sense of dread, Haibara quickly made her way over to the nearest row and pretended to read the nutrition labels on the snacks when in reality, she was listening to the noisy conversation spoken over the buzzing sound coming from the invisible robber _s_.

"Well, N2A, N2B (it sounded like Nitua and Nitubee), how many humans are in here?"

"There are nine total, N1Z (Nwunzee), and that includes the little girl who just came in after us."

"Good, we can manage that with just the seven of us as long as we try and group multiple people together. Remember to use Our eyes first to mesmerize, but if We have to sting, only use a half-dosage of hypno-venom. The human at the money box is the only one that needs the full dosage. N3N (Nuthreen) will be the prime stinger and N8O (Naeto) will collect the money. N2 twins will take care of the people in the back, N9X (Nnainx) and N5K (Nufivek) will take care of the people in the front, and We will take care of the rest of the store workers. Now go."

Haibara knew the only reason she'd heard _any_ of that was because of the Babelfish in her ear and hearing the conversation only served to confirm her suspicions on the identity of the invisible robber. The buzzing, the naming convention, invisible bodies, the targets lined up in a northeast direction, mesmer eyes, a hypno-venom, it all added up. She knew exactly what these aliens were and like Kudo always said, one truth prevails. However, no one truth was going to help her stop seven aliens from robbing yet _another_ convenience store. She needed to do something, and she needed to do it fast because she could hear the buzzing sound of wings coming closer to her. Well, the first order of business was to prevent herself from being hypnotized by their mesmer eyes. From the same pocket as her neuralyzer, she withdrew a pair of dark sunglasses and put them on.

She hummed to herself and said in a childish pitch, "Big Brother was right! I _do_ feel cooler wearing sunglasses at night!"

It felt silly to say, but she was seven right now. She was allowed to say silly things and it was an excellent pretense to hide her eyes. These particular aliens couldn't mesmerize her without direct eye contact.

The alien sighed "We hate human larvae" and the buzzing wings drew closer.

In one swift movement, Haibara flipped out one of her flashlights and shone it in the direction of the buzzing. A large, glimmering, rainbow-colored flying insect suddenly appeared where the flashlight struck. It resembled a beetle, but with a dragonfly's wings and giant compound eyes, and it possessed a mirror-like carapace that reflected white light away from their bodies, dispersing it as color and effectively becoming invisible. Reversing the process reversed the effect and made the insect appear.

"I knew it. You _are_ Rainbow Dazzleflies," she muttered and then asked "Why are you robbing human stores? Did the Queen order you to do this?"

The dazzlefly halted in midair and cocked its head sideways. "The human can hear and see Us?" it said to itself.

Haibara took advantage of its momentary confusion to lunge forward and grab it at the base of its wasp-like stinger. Its defensive weapon neutralized, she dropped the flashlight to pull out the now-empty jam jar and slammed it into the mirror carapace. Both cracked on impact and shards from both fell to the ground at her feet. She kept her precarious hold on both jar and insect as she backed away, the former being her weapon and the latter being her shield. There was no way the other dazzleflies hadn't heard the commotion. Sure enough, she heard them coming and she backed up against the shelving, swinging the broken jar in her hand to where she heard the noises coming from. She wished she had a third hand to shine the rainbow flashlight again, but she couldn't let go of the dazzlefly she'd captured without it stinging her with the hypno-venom and she couldn't just rip off the stinger because that would kill it.

"Stay back, Dazzleflies," she warned. "I'm an MiB operative-"

"-MiB!" two disembodied voices and the insect in her arm gasped.

"-and I may not be able to see you, but I can still hear you and I won't hesitate to break your carapaces like your sister here if you force my hand. This crime spree has gone on long enough. One of you lock the front doors and one of you fetch Nwunzee. I wish to speak with her about her unit's actions in compliance with the will of the hive."

The buzzing faded away as the two dazzleflies left to fulfill her tasks. The one under her arm squirmed a little and whined pitifully, but Haibara had its wings pinned and its stick-like legs weren't strong enough to pull away. She kept one ear open for any surprise attacks, but let the rest of her mind wander. She'd bought some time, but she was in a stalemate that could easily turn against her. She didn't want to hurt any of them and unlike many alien species, Rainbow Dazzleflies were quite docile. They were a matriarchal, hive-oriented species much like Earth's own ants, bees, and termites with a queen at the top, a small group of male drones to mate with, and an entire hive of female workers who did everything else. They generally only acted with the interest of the hive in mind and were only aggressive when the life of the hive or the Queen was threatened. That was why Haibara found this series of robberies being committed by them so troubling and that was why she wished to speak with the unit leader. Perhaps she was missing something and the dazzleflies did indeed have a valid – in their eyes – hive-centric reason for stealing money from convenience stores. Or, and this was what she feared, something had caused this family unit to go rogue and they were no longer connected with the rest of the hive. An exiled dazzlefly was a dangerous dazzlefly, and a unit of them was even worse.

Haibara was brought back out of her thoughts by returning buzz and she heard them stop to hover in front of her. "Am I speaking with the unit leader?" she asked cautiously. This would be so much easier if she could see them.

There was a silent pause and then, "You…? Sherry?"

Cold fear flashed through her. "What?"

"It's you? Are you Sherry?"

"I… No, I-"

"-Oh? You say 'no'? You're not Sherry?"

Confused, alarmed, and feeling like her chances were better if she lied, she said, "No, I'm not Sherry, I'm-"

Haibara broke off with a gasp as a sharp pain lanced through her neck. How had they-? She didn't hear-! Instantly, she felt light-headed and drowsy. Sensing weakness, the dazzlefly under her arm made a fresh attempt to escape. She tried to retighten her grip on the struggling insect, but her arm was unresponsive and the dazzlefly slipped free.

"How are your wings, N9X?"

"Don't worry, N9X, your mirrors will be fixed after your next shed."

The Babelfish was still in her ear translating everything, but it was quickly becoming impossible to understand anything happening around her. She fought to retain her sense of self, but it was like holding water: frustratingly pointless. After a sadly brief struggle, Haibara lost the fight and her conscious mind slept.

()()()()()

When Haibara 'awoke', it took a minute or two for her to remember what happened, but once she did, she was quick to dispel any lingering grogginess. She didn't immediately recognize her surroundings, but was shocked to discover that she wasn't restrained at all. She was literally just standing in the middle of what looked like a dilapidated car mechanic shop and the Rainbow Dazzleflies, all seven of them, were hovering in a circle facing each other with their mirror carapaces inverted (except for the one that must be Nnainx – the left broken half remained the same), which made them very visible to Haibara's normal human eyes. They were conversing with each other and none of them seemed to have noticed she was no longer in a trance. She listened in, grateful that they hadn't removed the Babelfish from her ear either.

"We still think it's a bad idea," one said.

"We agree with N8O; we should not have called her," said another.

"She wants Sherry and the human larva looks like Sherry, so We called her. We are being difficult, N5K," one insisted.

"But N1Z, the file she gave us said Sherry isn't a larva, she's an adult. Larvae pupate into adults, but adults don't pupate back into larvae," Nufivek retorted.

It was times like these that Haibara found it very frustrating that Rainbow Dazzleflies had no first-person pronouns in their language and refused to use second-person pronouns when addressing individuals from the same hive. It made understanding them just that much more difficult, but she didn't need to decipher the pronoun game to figure out that someone was after her, they had used the dazzleflies to capture her, and this 'she' they were referring to was coming to collect. Wherever she was, she had to get out _now_. Yet despite them capturing her to deliver to some unknown entity, Haibara still didn't feel a sense of hunting blood lust coming from them. It was like they had no will of their own.

"Humans don't pupate though, so maybe they _can_ regress back to their larval forms," a different one suggested.

"The human larva agreed when asked that she wasn't Sherry, N3N," Naeto pointed out.

"But the human larva _did_ admit to being an MiB operative, right N2A?"

"Why are We asking Us? We N2 twins were both in the back of the store; N9X was the one who heard her," Nitua replied.

"She didn't fight like a larva," Nnainx grumbled unhappily as she stroked one of her twig-like legs over the damaged mirror.

Haibara internally winced as she continued her slow shuffling slide towards the far back corner where several rusted cars were stored in a row and happened to be hiding a stretch of dusty storage cabinets that had probably been used to hold replacement parts and the assorted car liquids of different brands. Her body screamed at her to move faster, but she resisted the impulse. The dazzleflies were completely unaware that she was no longer hypnotized and she was going to keep it that way for as long as she could. That meant not drawing attention to herself by running and that also meant taking careful steps that wouldn't disturb the dust.

It was painfully-slow work and it felt like it took forever, but at last she finally managed to crouch down in the corner out of sight from the dazzleflies and was able to take a closer look at the cabinets. They didn't seem to be locked, but she was hesitant to try opening one. All she needed was one good squeak from a rusty hinge and she'd be found. She quickly glanced around, taking stock of her surroundings once more and her eyes landed on the nearby cars. Well, why not? Nobody was using them and she was small enough to slip under them. Maybe she could even crawl into one and curl up in the foot space by the pedals.

However, just as she was about to look into that possibility, one of the dazzleflies shrieked, "The human larva's gone!"

"What?! We have to find her! Split up and search everywhere in the area! She's small, so she couldn't have gotten far!"

She'd run out of time! Haibara quickly darted under the closest car and flattened herself out against the ground in line with the car's axle, between the back tires. Some of the dust rose and she fought down a sneeze that threatened to give her away. She tuned back into her surroundings and listened intently. She could faintly hear a buzzing noise coming in her direction now and pressed one of the buttons on her wristwatch. The circular covering popped open with a soft click – a spare of Kudo's stun-gun wristwatch – and her finger hovered over the trigger. She only had one needle in the watch. There would be no second chances if she failed. The buzzing became so loud, Haibara was sure the dazzlefly was directly overhead. She held perfectly still, arm poised to shoot, and watched the top of the car's underside edge. She saw blurred translucent wings… then spindly legs… she shot the dart as soon as she saw the unprotected underbelly of the abdomen. The dart struck true and the dazzlefly's flight shuddered ominously. Haibara quickly lunged forward and caught it before it hit the ground and raised a cloud of dust, then brought it under the car with her. She didn't hear any other buzzing, so this was probably the only one searching the shop for the moment.

Holding on to her prize, she scurried out from under the car and peeked at the driver's side. The door was still present, though the window was smashed. She was neither tall enough to climb in, nor did she wish to risk leaving a clean swath of dust on the door in the attempt, but maybe… She tried the door handle and to her surprise, it opened. Haibara glanced inside and saw enough room by the pedals for her to seclude herself. She squeezed inside with the sleeping dazzlefly and gently closed car door behind her just enough to hear the latch click. She then slipped off the seat and crouched down in the foot space. With a jolt, she realized there was a large, gaping hole beneath the brake pedal, and peering through it, she saw the six-inch-diameter hole extended all the way out to the front of the car through the grill. What the heck? Did this car get into a fight with a javelin; why was there such a strange circular hole all the way through the front like that? Despite its positioning, she could still avoid sitting in front of the hole but didn't think it would end up being a problem.

It was dark in the shop and the hole was small enough in such an odd place that even if the Rainbow Dazzleflies did look through it, they wouldn't be able to see anything. They weren't nocturnal, which was another reason the evening robbery times occurring just before nightfall were so unusual to her. Even if they couldn't see her through the front hole, she currently had no such protection if they looked through the windows into the car's interior.

'That's where you come in, my friend,' she thought grimly as she adjusted the dazzlefly in her arms and started carefully reverting the alien insect's mirror carapace to its original position.

She worked until the mirrors completely surrounded the body once more, and then she extended the mirrors outward as far as they would spread before placing the insect on top of her. The mirrors now covered her like a sheet. Ordinarily, the mirror carapace would not be useful in hiding her from other dazzleflies, but she remembered Akemi had once mentioned that they could only see each other when beneath their armor when they were awake because their bodies emitted a special light. They supposedly didn't create that light when they were sleeping and Haibara prayed with everything she had that her sister was right, because she was done for otherwise. She waited still and silent underneath her unwilling companion, even as she felt the feeling leave her limbs and heard two more dazzleflies pass by her hiding place without spotting her.

Just as she was beginning to wonder what she would do if they stayed so long that the sedative in the dart wore off before she could escape, she heard one of the dazzleflies, perhaps Nwunzee, call out, "Everyone regroup back at the point of origin immediately!"

Haibara instinctively glanced at her dazzlefly, but it showed no inclination of having heard the command from the unit leader. A mass of buzzing wings came from all directions up ahead. She automatically turned her head in that direction and realized with a start that she could see the exact spot where the unit was regathering through the hole in the car. How ridiculously convenient! Still… She warily peered through the hole and saw the remaining six dazzleflies hovering in a loose circle all facing each other. Maybe it was the jerky manner in which they corrected their motions to maintain position or the frantic twitchiness of their antennae, but they all seemed anxious.

"Where's N8O?" Nwunzee demanded of the group.

"We don't know! We haven't seen her since we first split up to find the human larva!" one answered.

"What if N8O found the human larva and was captured by her?!" another asked.

"Even if she was, the human larva's long gone by now and Pandora will be here any minute with us having nothing to show for it!"

Haibara barely managed to stifle her gasp in time. Pandora…! It wasn't… It couldn't be the same one the Gorda had mentioned, could it?!

"So what do we do? She said she wanted us to capture Sherry, but we don't have Sherry or the human larva who looks like her."

"Can we just leave before she gets here?" Nnainx, the one with the broken mirrors, asked tentatively.

"That won't end well, she'll just hunt us down and kill us."

"And she won't if there's no Sherry when she arri- _AIIEEE!_ " A gunshot rang out and the speaking dazzlefly crumpled to the ground as one of its wings flew off to land on the ground a few feet away.

Haibara stared in shock at the dismembered limb until the sounds from the outside world finally permeated her consciousness and she heard the footsteps. It was a bipedal gait with a long, easy stride and solid footwear like shoes or hooves. The owner was moving forward and approaching her line of sight. First, she saw black dress shoes and slacks then her eyes widened when she saw the hem of a long black coat. Coming closer still, she saw the trailing end of long silvery-blond hair and felt her heart soar of its own accord. It was…!

The new arrival came to a stop, completely visible through Haibara's peephole and green eyes glared hatefully at the alien insects. "Where's the girl?"

'Gin!' she thought with a swell of relief. She was safe now, but these aliens _wouldn't_ be if she didn't show Gin she was alright. However, she'd been frozen in one position for so long that trying to uncramp herself out of it physically hurt and her extremities tingled unpleasantly.

It looked like it would take too long for her to pop out of hiding and knowing Gin's patience was zero when his loved ones were threatened, she was about to call out to him when one of the dazzleflies started speaking and made her pause. "I'm sorry, she seems to have gotten away."

Terrible silence descended in the shop. Gin grinned and his eyes briefly flashed blood red. In that instant, Haibara felt a familiar pressure in her chest and her breath seized. It was the same malevolent, choking pressure she'd sensed from Vermouth – the cruel hunting blood lust – and it was coming from Gin.

He withdrew his Beretta and systematically shot and killed every single one of the Rainbow Dazzleflies with barely a pause. The bodies fell from the air with a heavy thump. Watery green ichor oozed slowly out of the fatal wounds onto the floor. Nnanix's already-damaged mirror crumbled even more and the glass fragments tinkled as they rolled away.

The pressure faded away when the last leg stopped twitching and Gin reholstered the gun with a sigh. "What a waste," he muttered. "The one I used on Irish wasn't strong enough, but _this_ one ended up being _too_ strong, _and_ Sherry's still alive to boot. Their venom better be worth it." Then he turned on his heel, his silvery hair sweeping around behind him as he strode out of the shop.

Even when Haibara could no longer hear Gin's footsteps, she stayed rooted to her hiding place unmoving. She could have stayed there for hours with her jaw agape in a silent, horrified scream and her arms frozen with fear.

Eventually, and who knew how long it really was, she reached for her phone in her back pocket and pulled it out. Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to delete the numbers she was inputting several times before she got the right one and brought the phone to her ear to listen to the ringing.

The recipient picked up mercifully quickly. _"Ah, Ai, where are you? It's almost 7:45 already. Have you had dinner yet?"_ Dr. Agasa asked.

"P… Professor… Please come get me…" she breathed, unable to speak any louder than a whisper.

" _Ai, what happened? What's wrong?"_

"I was kidnapped… by a unit of Rainbow Dazzleflies… They weren't acting normal… Stealing from convenience stores… I followed them… they kidnapped me… I don't know where I am, and they're… my god, they're dead… all dead…" she broke off with a choked sob.

" _Eh?! Dead?! How? Who killed them?"_

"It was…" she halted, staring blankly ahead. She could see it all in her mind's eye: the terrible grin, the flash of red, the malignant pressure. She shook her head. "I don't know."

" _Are you safe right now?"_

She nodded jerkily. "I think so… I think the killer's gone… Left when the dazzleflies told him they lost me… after he…"

" _Wait, what do you mean 'told him they lost you'?"_ Dr. Agasa asked bewildered.

"Not right now… I'll tell you later… Can you also bring some preservation gel when you pick me up? Something that can be used on alien corpses?"

" _Ah, yeah, I should have something like that lying around here that will work, but where am I picking you up from?"_

Right, she still didn't know that yet. "Don't worry, I'll find out for you. It might take me a while though, so you can start getting everything ready and head northeast. I'll text you the nearest address once I find out, but I'll be staying out of sight. I've got…" Haibara glanced down at her companion, sleeping blissfully unaware of the tragic fate that had just befallen her family unit, and gulped. "… a survivor."

()()()()()

It was a good thing everyone at school was still up in arms over the Phantom Thief Kid fiasco of last night and were too preoccupied to notice Haibara was both sleepier and more jumpy than usual. She'd had an awful night's sleep full of nightmares and the daylight hours did nothing to drive them away, for the fears that fueled them were not the product of a child's overactive imagination. She had dreamed of Gin, a common enough occurrence even though the subject material this time was anything but.

She dreamed she'd perfected the antidote and the threat to her and Dr. Agasa had been lifted. She was free to return home and Gin was there waiting for her. She had run to him and he'd caught her in his arms, hugging her tightly. She had kissed him with all the passion and pain of their long separation and he had kissed her back just as ardently. After they had broken apart, she had promised she would never leave his side and that was the moment everything went wrong.

He'd smiled, cold and insincere, and held her in a vice-like grip as he lowered his head, his breath ghosting over her ear when he said, "Then let's celebrate our reunion with your favorite color of the rose-"

There was a click and the press of cold metal against her temple, his gun at her head.

"-in the pure redness of _blood_."

Then he'd held her pinned to his side as her family and friends all came forward out of the darkness and Gin shot them all one after the other with a maniacal gleam in his eyes and a savage grin on his face. The red blood flowed so fast and deep, it pooled up to their ankles and dragged her under like quicksand, the oxygen-providing fluid ironically drowning her…

And that was when she'd finally been able to force herself awake.

Haibara was supposed to be focusing on some first-grade-level writing exercise, but it was nowhere _near_ stimulating enough to prevent her thoughts from dwelling on the nightmare and what she'd witnessed the night before. No matter how much it looked and sounded like him, it wasn't Gin who murdered the dazzleflies. In fact, she had quickly come to the conclusion that it was really the alien Pandora that the dazzleflies had mentioned just before she – they had used the 'she' pronoun – had shown up, but she had looked _just_ like Gin. _Just_ like him. If the dazzleflies hadn't acted like they were expecting him and Haibara hadn't seen 'his' eyes turn red for that brief second, she never would have known it _wasn't_ the real Gin, and that… that _terrified_ her. What if something had happened to him and he was being impersonated just like Akemi? The thought had crossed her mind last night and she'd been seconds away from calling him to make sure when the memory of his frightening visage had stilled her hands. That might not have been the real Gin, but she had seen him make that expression before, twice within the past year alone. It was the face he'd worn when he'd faced her on the snow-covered rooftop of the Haido City Hotel and again during his interrogation of the Gorda several months ago.

She'd put her phone aside then, but now not even those memories were enough to dissuade her from wanting to drop everything she was doing and calling him to make sure he was still alive. School was just barely half-over though and she wasn't about to pull an Edogawa excuse of going to the bathroom just to call her significant other. Haibara released a quiet huff of frustration and desperately tried to refocus on the work before her. This was turning out to be a painfully-long school day.

()()()()()

 _Miraculously_ , Haibara managed to get through the school day without alerting Kudo to any suspicious behavior on her part and was safely back at home in the basement staring determinedly at her phone. She was being ridiculous hesitating like this. It wasn't Gin who'd murdered the dazzleflies, but this Pandora character. Even so, if Kudo's soul was still pure and whole, then Gin's was the opposite. His soul was torn and corrupted, and he'd chosen to place his faith in loyalty instead of justice. He had a dark side that enjoyed causing pain and fear in others, and she was sitting with her phone in her hands acting like she didn't already know this… Like she hadn't sensed that darkness in him from the very first moment they met at the airport and she had gazed into those foreboding eyes of ice… Like she hadn't gotten to know him anyway and fallen in love while doing so… With that thought in mind, she screwed up her courage and dialed Gin's number before she got cold feet again.

" _Yes, it's me. What's up?"_ Gin answered after a few rings.

Haibara opened her mouth to answer then paused, closed it, and then said apologetically in a childish pitch, "Um, I'm sorry, but are you Rika's dad?"

"… _What…?"_

"Well, I was trying to call my friend Rika from class because she invited me over to come play, and I thought that-"

" _-Sherry, what the hell are you playing at right now?!"_ Gin yelled at her suddenly.

Warm relief swept through her. "Good, it is you. I had to be sure and now as a favor, I need you to answer something for me. What was the very last thing we discussed?" Haibara asked.

" _The fuck are you-?"_

"Just answer the damn question, Gin!" she screamed.

There was a moment of silence before he muttered mutinously _, "You confirmed that Kudo was present at Tohto Tower on the night of Tanabata when Irish betrayed the Organization and the NOC list was secured."_

The remaining tension seeped out of her shoulders and she exhaled heavily. "Thank you, Gin. That was all I needed to know. Bye."

" _Wait, Sherry don't-!"_

Haibara hung up on him and then immediately powered off her cellphone before he could call her back. Her Gin was alive, that was all that mattered right now. There were other things she needed to tell him soon, but not yet, not until she had a better understanding of what happened the previous night with the Rainbow Dazzleflies. Questioning the living Naeto had only confirmed the strangeness of the family unit's behavior, but offered no insight into what had caused it. She seemed to know she was not herself, that an alien called Pandora had approached them about… something… and that they'd stolen money from convenience stores as bait to catch a woman named Sherry, but that was about it. Her memory of the past two or so weeks was hazy, but she felt, in her own words, 'like her body was detached from her mind and acting freely of its own accord'.

To Haibara, it sounded similar to the brief feeling of disassociation she'd experienced when she was stung by the dazzleflies' hypno-venom right before she was captured, but she didn't have much to go on. Now that the question of Gin's safety had been answered, she hoped that performing necropsies on the dazzlefly bodies would offer some answers to the cause of their abnormal behavior.

()()()()()

"Wait, Sherry don't hang up!" Gin shouted into the phone, but the call had already disconnected. He stared at it dumbstruck and then glared at it. "Sherry, whatever your game is here, I don't like it," he muttered. He stuffed the cigarette he'd been smoking before the call in the ashtray and redialed her number. Her phone didn't even ring and went straight to voicemail, causing him to growl, "Oh no. You're not getting away with it that easily."

"Aniki, what's going on?" Vodka asked from the passenger seat next to him.

"That's what I'd like to know," Gin snarled. "Sherry just called me but pretended like she was a normal kid who might have gotten the wrong number until she was convinced I was really me. Then she asked me what the last thing we talked about was, so I told her, and she hung up and turned off her phone! Does that sound normal to you?"

"No."

"Exactly, which is why I'm calling the one guy near her who knows her true nature."

"Wait, you're actually calling the Arquillian?!" Vodka exclaimed.

"I am as soon as I can find his number," Gin said and tossed his phone at Vodka. "He's in my Contacts list somewhere. I can't look for it while I'm driving, and I can't remember his name either."

After a few seconds of searching, Vodka said, "Found him. 'Hiroshi Agasa (Sherry's scientist)'."

Gin nodded. "Good, call him and give me back the phone."

Vodka did so, and Gin took the phone back, placing it against his ear and listening to it ring. The voice of an old man that Gin had never heard before answered _, "Hello, Dr. Agasa speaking."_

"Dr. Hiroshi Agasa, I am Gin, an executive agent of the Men in Black and an acquaintance of Sherry who is currently a resident of your home. I have a few questions for you about her if you're able to answer right now," Gin said.

" _Ah… yes sir, I can answer…"_ the scientist said uncertainly.

"Very good, but first…" his eyes narrowed. "Did something happen to Sherry recently?"

" _Eh! H-How do you know?!"_

Gin snorted. "Hmph, Sherry called me just now and was behaving strangely. She first pretended she was actually a child despite instigating the call, then demanded I tell her what we discussed in our last conversation and hung up without explaining herself. So I'll ask again: what happened to Sherry?"

" _Ah… well… if she's already called and didn't tell you, I'm not sure I have the right to tell you about it…"_

Gin gritted his teeth and his eyes became narrow slits. "Let me make this very plain to you, Professor," he said in a tone as low as it was deadly. "If Sherry has come to any harm while under your care, I will not hesitate to remove her from her assignment to protect you while she's in hiding, the consequences be damned. Now… for the last time… what. happened. to. _Sherry_?"

" _She wasn't hurt, I swear it!"_ Agasa exclaimed frantically. _"But… yesterday after confronting a family unit of Rainbow Dazzleflies that were stealing from convenience stores, they kidnapped her. She managed to escape unscathed, but the entire group was slaughtered, and she doesn't know who did it."_

"Are you sure that's it?" he asked sharply.

" _I promise that's all I know!"_ Agasa insisted.

"Very well. Thank you for your cooperation," Gin sighed heavily.

" _Hey…"_ Agasa said as if coming to a sudden realization. _"You wouldn't happen to be Ai's…"_

"-No," he cut off before the aged scientist could complete that thought and hung up.

"What's the situation, Aniki?" Vodka asked.

"Sherry was kidnapped by dazzleflies yesterday," he said woodenly.

"What?!" Vodka exclaimed, sounding both alarmed and confused.

"The scientist said she wasn't hurt and managed to get away on her own."

"Well, that's a relief, but… dazzleflies…? That's not normal, is it?"

"No, and that's probably what caught Sherry's attention in the first place," he agreed.

"But just now, why didn't Sherry tell you she'd been kidnapped if nothing more than that happened? Surely, she knew such a weird, uninformative call would freak you out," Vodka said.

Gin hummed as he stared out the front window at the long stretch of black highway ahead of him and drummed his fingers idly on the steering wheel, thinking. "She had no choice…" he said at last. "She had to call to make sure I was still myself and not somebody else… But whatever happened when she was captured scared her badly enough that she's keeping it secret from everyone, even the Professor… Vodka, if she doesn't call me back within a week to give me the full story, I'm going to interrogate her in person. All sorts of monsters lurk in the dark, and I'll be damned if _I'm_ caught sleeping just because _Sherry_ was too prideful to keep me abreast of her current situation."

()()()()()

Haibara hadn't called Gin back yet. He was going to be furious with her for not telling him about the kidnapping, and even more so for waiting so long, but she was still putting it off. She'd chosen instead to focus on the necropsy of the dazzlefly and was now analyzing the tissue samples she'd taken. Naeto was currently buzzing quietly around her secret lab hidden behind the back wall of her closet in the basement, and she trying to read the chemical labels. When Haibara had been doing the actual dissection, she'd had to send the poor bug out of the lab up to the main part of the house with the Professor. She couldn't watch one of her unit sisters being cut into and Haibara didn't blame her. She could perform autopsies on human strangers no problem, but she didn't think she could maintain the necessary professional detachment if the body was of someone she knew personally.

She had finished with dissecting the body and, having seen nothing abnormal on the macroscopic level, was now turning to the microscopic. She didn't even know what she was looking for, except that an entire family unit of Rainbow Dazzleflies couldn't suddenly break their genetically-ingrained hive-centric mentality without assistance. And, as she kept reminding herself every time one of her lines of investigation failed to yield results, Pandora _had_ done something to the unit according to Naeto's testimony. She was still just trying to figure out what that was.

It was when she got to the slides she'd made of the liver-like organ (which was proof enough that dazzleflies were never Earth-based insects, since only vertebrates had livers), that she finally found something to make her pause. Healthy liver cells were pinkish and round with full, dark nuclei and very little white space present. Fatty livers had large round globs of white spread throughout and cirrhotic livers, depending on the extent of the liver scarring, would have patches of tightly-packed blue-colored cells breaking up the normal liver cell pattern like a highway through a neighborhood subdivision. The cells she was looking at now resembled those of a cirrhotic liver, but someone experienced in working with the liver could tell if it was fatty or scarred without having to look at the cells under a microscope. The liver of the dazzlefly had looked completely healthy when she'd examined it still in the body.

Haibara adjusted the focus of the microscope to a higher magnification and zoomed in on the cluster of apparent scar tissue. It was blue, but she could immediately tell that was where the similarities ended. The cells were still those of liver cells, but they were compressed and filled with a blue fluid that did _not_ appear to be either cytoplasm or water. She slid away from the microscope and walked over to the small refrigerator where she was storing her tissue samples in the preservation gel until she was ready for them. She pulled out the entire tray and plucked out one of the ones labeled 'liver'. She placed the contents of one phial in the centrifuge and made sure to balance it with another phial filled with water on the opposite side before turning it on. She drummed her fingers idly on the counter as she waited for the centrifuge to finish spinning and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was already 9:15; she'd missed dinner again this week. Oh well.

At last, the machine slowed to a halt and Haibara removed both phials. She poured the water one back into the sink and brought the other phial up to her eye level. All of the solids and liquids had been separated and at the very top was a thin layer of clear light blue liquid. She frowned at it. That definitely wasn't normal, but what was it? She siphoned off the blue liquid with a pipette, careful not to extract any of the clear fluid below it, and transferred it to another phial without a cap. She labeled it and then brought it over to the computer set in the wall. This was an MiB unit from the science division that could do things the average computer couldn't. She pressed a purple capsule-shaped button on the operating system's hard drive and a slot opened up much like a CD tray except that a clamp extended outward instead. Haibara placed the phial between the arms and pressed the purple button again to retract them.

With the liquid now in the computer, she turned her focus back to the monitor and the keyboard. She clicked on an icon with a flask full of green liquid to activate the chemical analysis software and the machine hummed to life as it processed the sample. While she was waiting for the red loading bar to fill up, she opened up the chemical portion of the MiB's network database in preparation. The Men in Black had the most comprehensive database of known natural and manufactured chemicals of Earthly and extraterrestrial origin with newly-discovered chemicals being added to the list all the time. If the MiB had encountered this strange blue liquid in the liver before, then she would find it as soon as the computer finished the analysis.

The computer dinged at her and the analysis window popped up in front, showing her a 100% completion bar. Haibara smiled to herself and closed the window which automatically opened the file folder where it was stored. She renamed the file but kept the analysis ID number and imported the file into the MiB chemical database. Once the file was accepted, she ran a match scan and left the computer to start cleaning up. She'd been staying up too late these past few nights and the lack of sleep was starting to catch up with her. Also, it would probably take all night for the computer to compare her unknown chemical to every other chemical in the database, so now was as good a stopping point as any.

Once her work stations were clean, everything turned off except the computer, and her samples stored once more, Haibara turned to the dazzlefly hovering by the medicine cabinet and said, "Naeto, I'm leaving the lab. You have to come out now."

"Okay, We're coming," she said distractedly – Haibara could still only hear and understand her thanks to the Babelfish – but flew out the secret door ahead of her.

Haibara turned off the last of the lights and pressed a white button hidden in the back right bottom corner of the closet. The closet's back wall slid right into place with not a trace of evidence to indicate there was anything to hide.

()()()()()

The next morning came bright and early, and Haibara felt refreshed from having finally gone to bed at a decent time and gotten a full night's worth of sleep. Remembering her unfinished work from the previous night, Haibara got up – without disturbing the Professor or the dazzlefly that had taken to sleeping at the foot of her bed like a cat – and made her way down to the basement closet. She opened up the lab doors and entered. It was chilly inside and she gave a shudder, but approached the computer mainframe with purpose. The screen had gone into sleep mode, so she jiggled the mouse and the screen immediately lit up. Haibara blinked her eyes a few times to adjust to the sudden brightness before she could stare at the screen properly, and her eyes widened in surprise. The MiB match scan had detected one other chemical in the database with a 72% match to the one she'd scanned, but the chemical it was matched to was also of an unclassified substance. Great, the Organization had encountered a similar substance before, but she was no closer to discovering what it was.

Frowning in frustration, she clicked on the file for the unknown chemical to read over the background information, and the first thing she saw when she opened the document was Scotch's profile picture. The second thing she saw was that the record of the chemical had been submitted to the Organization's database two years ago. Curious, Haibara scanned through what little was available on the existing chemical and her expression slowly grew more alarmed until she reached the end of the document.

Gin's words from several months ago seemed to echo in her head _, "_ _The autopsy found some kind of odd drug in Scotch's system, but it was at such low levels that they couldn't identify it…"_

Even not knowing what the drug was, it had still been submitted into the MiB's chemical database, and now she had a chemical in her possession extracted from a corpse that had a 72% match similarity.

"… _the lack of blood splatter on Scotch's right thumb suggests he may have been the one to pull the trigger and committed suicide. While more plausible than the theory that Rye killed him, it still doesn't make sense… committing suicide with Akai's gun doesn't fit with Scotch's character assessment…"_

Scotch's strange suicide…

" _There were many suspicious points, such as Akai failing to meet me at the scheduled time and had instead pursued another codenamed member who happened to be a NOC like him."_

… and Akai pursuing him despite having a scheduled meeting with Gin after only _just_ earning a codename rank… Could it be…? But this meant…!

Her heart racing, Haibara tore out of the room and grabbed her phone off the desk next to the computer table where it was charging. She quickly dialed Gin's number and waited, silently begging for him to answer as it rang.

He answered and swore _, "Damn it, Sherry, do you have_ _ **any**_ _idea how mad I am at you right now?!"_

"You can scold me for scaring the living daylights out of you later! Right now, I have something extremely important to tell you and this cannot wait!" she said frantically.

In an instant, the anger was gone and his voice was cool and composed as ice. _"Sherry, what happened?"_

"Where do I even start?!" she exclaimed, absent-mindedly running a hand through her bangs. "I was kidnapped nearly a week ago by a group of Rainbow Dazzleflies-"

" _-I_ _ **know**_ _,"_ he growled. _"I had to call the Arquillian you're living with to figure out why you were behaving so strangely."_

"You called…!" she gasped in outrage.

" _-What did you expect I was going to do after receiving such a weird phone call?! Idly twiddle my thumbs and assume everything was fine!"_

Haibara shook her head in frustration. "This isn't what I want to talk about right now!"

" _You've already spent nearly a week_ _ **not**_ _talking about this! If you hadn't called me by tomorrow, I was going to come and interrogate you about the matter in person!"_

"Gin-!"

" _-You_ _ **owe**_ _me, Sherry!"_

"Would you just shut up already?! Okay?" she yelled. It was so much easier being angry at Gin and it was the only thing keeping her from collapsing into a trembling bundle of fear and tears. "This is so much bigger than that; the dazzleflies kidnapped me by the order of a being they called Pandora!"

A heavy silence suddenly filled the air between them. _"What…?"_ he breathed.

"Remember? The Gorda we arrested for being in possession of high-powered plasma weapons mentioned a Pandora was on the move and that's why the criminal underground has been so anxious?"

" _I remember, I just didn't believe."_

"Well, the dazzleflies claimed the convenience store robberies were bait to capture me for Pandora. They used their hypno-venom to keep me placid and when it wore off, I was unrestrained and they were arguing with each other over whether I was Sherry or not. I took advantage of their distraction to find myself a hiding place, and tranquilized the first dazzlefly that came near it to hide under their mirror carapace once they realized I'd gone missing. They regrouped after a while and were panicking about not finding me when _you_ suddenly showed up… I _thought_ it was you…"

" _Sherry…?"_

"The dazzleflies weren't surprised to see you and when your voice asked where I was, they apologized for losing me… That's the only reason I hadn't yet revealed myself to you," her voice was trembling uncontrollably now and she hated it, but couldn't stop it. "Then you grinned – as you did to me at the Haido City Hotel and to the Gorda when you interrogated her – and I felt that same killing intensity as your eyes flashed red, and you shot and killed every single dazzlefly in the room except the one hiding with me…"

" _That wasn't me,"_ Gin insisted. It seemed important to him that she believe him.

Haibara nodded meekly. "I know. It had to be Pandora, but Gin… if it wasn't for the circumstances and the eyes abruptly shifting to red, I never would have known it _wasn't_ you… She resembled you _that_ accurately."

"' _She'?"_ he repeated.

"That's the pronoun the dazzleflies were using for Pandora. After everyone was dead, she said 'The one I used on Irish wasn't strong enough, but this one ended up being too strong, and Sherry's still alive to boot. Their venom better be worth it', before she left. Doesn't that sound like…?"

"… _like Pandora was responsible for the odd behaviors that caused both the dazzleflies to forsake their hive and Irish to betray the Organization?"_

"Yes…" she agreed.

" _What happened after that?"_

"I had Dr. Agasa come pick me up and rescue the only survivor of that unit-"

" _-Where is she now?"_ he interrupted.

"I interrogated her on what she knew, but her memory of the events of the past two weeks is fuzzy and she says most of the time, she felt like her brain and body were disassociated from each other, but she's been staying in the lab and the basement ever since."

" _Sherry…!"_ he groaned.

"Don't worry, I'm done with her now, so you can help her get back to her hive after this. Back to my story, the professor also brought along some corpse preservation gel that I had asked for so that I could dissect one of the bodies and see if I could discover the cause of the abnormality. I've been working on the necropsy all week and found nothing on the macroscopic scale. Last night when I was examining one of the liver slides, I saw some odd, compressed blue-colored cells that superficially resembled scar tissue from afar, but there wasn't any visible scarring on the whole organ when I examined it. I took another liver sample and after centrifuging it, discovered an unusual clear light blue liquid on top. I took that liquid and submitted it into the computer for chemical analysis with the MiB's database and this morning, I got a match back."

" _The MiB has seen this chemical before?"_

Haibara gulped and nodded shakily. She'd calmed down some when Gin had distracted her with Naeto's current fate and then was explaining the steps she'd taken to analyze the strange chemical. Now that she had come to the 'Results' and 'Discussion' sections of her report, she was feeling the fear coming back. "Sorta…" she admitted, "There was only one record it showed a 72% match similarity to… and it was to the unidentified chemical found during Scotch's autopsy."

" _Scotch's…?!"_

"Yeah… Gin… if this Pandora made a chemical that caused the dazzleflies and Irish to act strange, and this chemical has a 72% match rate to the one found in Scotch two years ago, wouldn't it be logical to assume that Pandora had created that chemical too?"

" _It is…"_ Gin admitted slowly. _"And if Scotch was acting strangely due to the chemical's imperfections, then that would have drawn Akai's attention and may have seemed more important to investigate than a meeting with an executive that could be rescheduled for a later date."_

"Those were my thoughts too, but that would mean Pandora has gotten close enough to _two_ MiB agents in two years to drug them with this chemical, and no one's been the wiser! Was an autopsy done on Irish?" A sudden brainwave hit her. "Or Calvados?"

" _Calvad- Oh… Yes, autopsies were performed as per company policy, but obviously they didn't find anything or the records of such a chemical would be in the computer already."_

Haibara groaned and ruffled her hair in frustration. "Can you find out if the autopsy teams saved any liver tissue samples from their bodies and have them centrifuge them? That's the organ I found the chemical in. I don't know if there'll be any in Calvados, but there _should_ be some in Irish. In fact, if there were any other incidents of MiB agents acting strangely for unspecified reasons, whether it resulted in their death or not, please find out as soon as you can and get that data submitted."

" _I'll try, Sherry, but we're not going to have anything older than five years stored, remember? During the blizzard, we had a power outage and the back-up generators for that section of the building suffered mechanical failure without our realizing it until it was too late."_

"We have to know how deep this goes!" Haibara insisted. "Codenamed MiB agents have been targeted and Pandora can so accurately take on the appearance and mannerisms of the man I love that even I can't tell the difference! She could infiltrate the Men in Black any time she wanted. She could even _be_ a full-time member, and we would never know! She could be literally anyone you meet! She could-!"

She broke off with a gasp. Short fair hair… Rectangular glasses… Sharp intelligence… Ikkaku rock… Intense blood lust…

"… She could be Akai," she said in a horrified whisper.

" _What?"_

"My sixth sense that alerted me whenever Vermouth was nearby, it's briefly gone off twice recently. I felt it when Akai appeared as Subaru Okiya the first time and I felt it again when he was confronting a criminal who was holding one of the kids hostage at Ikkaku rock."

" _I am sure that last part makes a lot more sense in context."_

Haibara ignored his quip. "I thought that maybe my sixth sense was becoming more sensitive and generalized or something, but what if Subaru Okiya isn't really Akai and I'm instead picking up on Pandora?" Sudden panic seized her. "What if it's Pandora who's after Dr. Agasa and I, and we're just sitting ducks waiting for her to ambush us from next door? Edward, what do I do?!"

" _Shiho, love, calm down, okay?"_ Gin said firmly. _"We don't know that anything like that has happened to Akai and even if he is Pandora, acting suspicious will do you no good. Just keep acting as you have been and try not to let him catch you alone. Be sure to warn Dr. Agasa of this and beef up the house's alien security system without making any changes that Kudo will notice. If 'Okiya' really is this Pandora, then she shouldn't be able to walk into the house undetected."_

"Okay… okay… thank you…" she said after taking several deep, calming breaths. "It's just… I'm scared Gin, _really_ scared. This feels just like when Vermouth was hunting me, but at least back then, my sixth sense was consistent. Now I don't even have that to warn me," she murmured fearfully.

She heard Gin exhale heavily on the other end and then he said _, "I'll admit its timing is inconvenient, but I have some ideas circling around in my head on how to combat it. You probably have to start getting ready for school soon, so I won't keep you much longer-"_

Oh yeah, school was a thing. She'd completely forgotten about it.

" _-but there's one more thing we have to do before we end this call. If there's a real chance that Pandora has infiltrated the Organization, then we're going to need to come up with a passphrase to verify that we're still Edward Kuroda and Shiho Miyano. It has to be something that is unique to us and simple enough to remember without being obvious or easy to guess,"_ he said.

"We should use our colors: red and silver. Oh, but what if I call you while Vodka's in the car with you?"

" _We'll have to say it in a language he doesn't know to keep it secret."_

"Okay, does he know English?" she asked.

" _Unfortunately, yes."_

"Don't you know German?"

Gin grunted _, "Enough to get around even though Riesling makes fun of my accent and pronunciation, but you don't know German, Sherry."_

"No, but I could just memorize the passphrases and repeat them back," she suggested.

" _That won't work. It'll be more difficult for you to remember without knowing the language and if I say the passphrase incorrectly, you won't catch it."_

Haibara huffed in annoyance. "Well, the only other language I know apart from Japanese and English is French, so _one_ of us is going to have to-"

" _-I know French."_

Haibara did a double-take. "You do?"

" _Yes."_

"Since when?"

" _Since I was in high school and thought learning French would impress girls enough to go out with me since Mama always used to say French was the language of love. Then after I put in all that effort, I was determined not to forget it."_

"I don't believe you. Say something in French."

There was a pause in which she imagined Gin rolling his eyes before he said _, "Dis quelque chose en français."_

Haibara stared blankly ahead, trying to process this new information. Gin had been twenty-three when she first met him and in her eyes, he'd always been a mature, responsible adult. Trying to imagine Gin as a typical fifteen- or sixteen-year-old teenage dork that did stuff just to impress girls was blowing her mind right now.

"You never used it on me," she said at last, somewhat indignantly. "How come I'm only just now finding this out about you?"

Gin chuckled _, "By the time_ _ **you**_ _came into my life, Sherry, I didn't need to resort to tricking you with a fancy foreign language. Besides, even if I had, it wouldn't have worked on you anyway."_

"Okay, fair point," she acknowledged. "So once we figure out what we're going to say, we can translate it. How are we going to do that?"

" _Hmm…"_ he hummed absent-mindedly. _"Your color is red, naturally. You are at your most beautiful in red, and when I think of you with longing, I remember our last meeting when you were standing on the balcony with the red setting sun illuminating you and your lovely hair in warm, brilliant, burning light."_

Haibara blushed and ducked her head shyly. "No need to be all romantic about it," she mumbled as she tucked some short strands of hair behind her ear, but she too found herself reminiscing about that same day later in the evening after the sun had set. She remembered how beautiful Gin's pale skin and silver hair had glowed in the light of the moon's cool, ethereal night. "Then… perhaps if I am the burning red sun, then you are the cool silver moon," she offered.

" _Beautiful, Sherry,"_ he purred and Haibara felt herself blush harder. After a while he said _, "How about this: 'Where does the silver moon lie? High in the red sun's sky', where the one who initiates the conversation asks the question and the other has to give the answering statement."_

"It's lovely, Gin. Unique, thematic, and simple, but not obvious or easy to guess. You have a true talent for wordplay," Haibara said.

" _I know, it drove Emma nuts every time we played word games as kids. She hated it,"_ he said, and she just knew that he was smirking.

Haibara smiled to herself. Ever since Gin had told her Curaçao was his twin, he had become much more open about mentioning her, even in brief moments like this, and it made her ridiculously happy. He was an intensely private person, but he was allowing her to see inside him anyway.

"Then in French, that passphrase would be 'Où se trouve la lune argente? Haute en ciel du soleil rouge'."

Gin snorted. _"Yes, if you just want to use the literal translation instead of the prettier version."_

"The prettier…?"

" _Ah, like this: 'Où reste la lune argente et claire? La sœur du soleil rouge se trouve dans l'air'."_

"You and your love of words…" Haibara muttered with a fond shake of her head and an amused smile. "You _can_ be a romantic when you try. At least we have some sort of identity check in place now. It's better than nothing anyway."

" _I'm not letting you die, Sherry,"_ Gin said sharply, and her smile faded slightly. _"When Vermouth forced you into a corner, you offered up your life as a sacrifice to protect those around you, but you don't get to make that call this time around. I won't let you. If someone close by is after you, whether it's Pandora or Akai himself, then I'll bring them down without mercy by any means necessary. You're not allowed to die, Sherry. Promise me that."_

"I…"

" _ **Promise."**_

"Okay, okay, I promise," she agreed.

" _Good. I'm holding you to it."_

She nodded absently. "Then, if I need to help somehow with getting Naeto safely out of the Professor's house, you're allowed to text me this time, but I guess I do have to get ready for school now."

" _I know. Take care, Sherry."_

"I'll try…" she said and hung up with a heavy sigh. "It's useless," she muttered despondently. "Making me promise something I can't keep. I have a target painted on my back by an enemy that can look like anyone. You are capable of some amazing things, Gin, but not even you can fight a war against an enemy you can't find."

()()()()()

Gin pulled the phone away from his ear after the call ended and stared blankly at the screen. _'Sherry…'_ he thought worriedly and his brow furrowed.

He'd felt her despair the very moment her composure had broken, and not even distracting her with talk of passphrases had been able to drive it away completely. It was that same melancholy mood that had possessed Sherry when she had begged him to marry her before it was too late. She was right; this situation _was_ just like the one with Vermouth, and Sherry had only survived the final confrontation thanks to the selfless courage of Ran Mouri. He still owed her for saving Sherry's life.

Gin was also still reeling from everything Sherry had just told him regarding her kidnapping, her findings from the dazzlefly necropsy, and all the implications involved with those. He remembered the Gorda he and Sherry had arrested together mentioning a Pandora, and even Rikumichi Kusuda seemed to put stock in its existence. At the time, he'd believed Kusuda was taunting him when he suggested there was a rumor the Pandora had infiltrated the Men in Black, but if it was really a shapeshifter – and a damned good one if it could fool even those closest to the individual whose identity it was borrowing – could there have been some truth to Kusuda's words? As soon as he got back to the science labs, he would order the prioritization of analyzing the liver samples taken from Calvados and Irish. If they were indeed all linked together by this same unidentified chemical as Sherry suspected, then the possibility of the MiB being compromised would suddenly become terrifyingly real. Nobody would be above suspicion. Not Vodka, not Curaçao, not even the Boss himself.

Irritatingly, he recalled Kusuda's last snide words to him before the Cephosanguine patriarch began to investigate Haido Central Hospital. _"… can your Organization look at two completely normal-looking, normal-response, healthy human cells and discern which one belongs to an alien?"_

The memory alone made Gin's lip curl and he ended up taking the next left turn sharper than he intended. The tires squeaked briefly in protest and he caught a whiff of burned rubber, but he didn't care. Half his mind was focused on getting to the Organization's science labs and the other half was focused on dialing the number of a person he hated almost as much as Vermouth.

" _Hello, Bourbon speaking?"_

Gin grimaced. "Bourbon, it's Gin."

" _Wow, so my Caller ID wasn't malfunctioning. It really is you calling me. To what do I owe this honor?"_ Bourbon said in his steady, low-key surprised voice.

For someone who got along famously with Vermouth and was just as irritating, he was a rather unflappable character, taking everything in stride with ease. The only time Gin was aware of him losing his cool and becoming emotionally-riled was when Scotch committed suicide.

"I have a new assignment for you: priority Alpha-1. As of this moment, all other current assignments are put on hold indefinitely if they interfere with the implementation of your Alpha-1 objective, understood?" Gin said.

" _Priority Alpha-1, huh? That's pretty serious, but why am I receiving this new assignment from you instead of my reporting supervisor? Or from Rum or the Boss?"_ Bourbon asked in that carefully casual way of his.

Damn him, this was another reason Gin hated talking to the other half-Japanese man. His mind was too sharp for his own good. "Watch your tongue, Bourbon," he said darkly. "I may not be the Number 2 of the Japanese branch of the Men in Black, but I still hold an executive rank and am perfectly qualified to give you new assignments directly without first passing them on to your supervisor."

" _Sorry, sorry, I just wanted to make sure this assignment wasn't going to be stepping on anyone's toes, that's all,"_ Bourbon said in a falsely-apologetic tone. _"So? What's my new assignment?"_

Forest green eyes narrowed into thin slits and Gin gripped his phone tighter. "I'm ordering you to relocate to Beika City in Tokyo. You will investigate every square centimeter of Beika and the surrounding areas for any and all hints of an alien known as Pandora. I don't care how you decide to do it, what you do, how much it will cost, or how long it will take. The Organization will reimburse you accordingly for your expenses, but you will report back to me _everything_ you find out about this being, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant. That is your new assignment; do you have any questions?"

" _Yes, just one for the moment. I presume you've chosen me for this assignment because of my specialization in intelligence gathering, but why are you narrowing my search range to such a limited area and why is this Pandora so important that you're giving this assignment an Alpha-1 priority?"_ Bourbon asked.

An image of Sherry came to him then. One of her tossing a barbed comment at him from over her shoulder with playful eyes and a coy smile on her lips while her short reddish hair spun out like a halo around her neck. The next image was of Sherry lying prone and lifeless sprawled on the ground in a growing pool of her own blood.

"I have reason to believe that there is something in Beika City that the Pandora is after," Gin answered at last. "As for why this assignment is being given such a high priority…" The fact that Bourbon didn't already know about Pandora was proof that his intelligence gathering skills were not infallible. "… you'll understand once you start investigating."

* * *

 _The psychic paper from Doctor Who has appeared in this story and now the Babelfish from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy had made an appearance. I wonder what other random sci-fi alien movies I'll end up borrowing from for this story._

 _Figuring out the timing for when this event should take place within the canon timeline was a special challenge, especially since the timing of events that take place in the anime versus the manga aren't always the same. For example, in the manga, Kaito Kid vs the Strongest Vault takes place after the Ikkaku Rock murder case, but in the anime, it's the reverse. In this instance, I decided to go with the manga timeline because it was both easier to refer back to and it fit into my story better. In the manga timeline, I was intrigued by the fact that the very next case that occurs after the showdown with the Iron Tanuki is the first time Bourbon as Scar Akai makes his appearance, so I decided to make use of that timing for my own plot-related purposes.  
_


	14. A Dangerous Party of Two

**Author's Note: Oooh, _only_ 6000+ instead of 16000+ words this time. Gin's been much more active in this story compared to Sherry, so I'm partially convinced that this chapter (and the next two) are demanding to be written to try and balance it out a bit, but they also want to be written to help build some tension. Once again... this chapter and the next three were not in the original outline when I first actually started planning this story out.**

 **Ah, and nothing major, but I went through and made a few spot revisions to all of the chapters prior to Raven Chaser to try and make the writing smoother (more fluid and less clunky). This chapter takes place during episode 557 (I think).**

* * *

A Dangerous Party of Two

'Try not to let him catch you alone', Gin had said. That was easier said than done, especially since the alien Professor insisted on attending an Inventor's Conference and Haibara was forced to come with him or else remain alone in the house next door to the creepy stalker named Subaru Okiya that could very well end up being her hunter.

And that was why she was now stuck at a bus stop with Dr. Agasa because the Beetle had broken down again and he'd carelessly left his wallet somewhere, so they had no car and no money to get back to Tokyo. Right now, he was on the phone with Kudo to ask if Mr. Mouri could pick them up.

"Eh?!" Dr. Agasa exclaimed and Haibara focused her hearing on the phone call. She could just barely hear Kudo on the other end.

" _It isn't that big of a deal, right? Just have her come pick you up in a taxi."_

"'Her'?" Dr. Agasa repeated blankly.

Haibara knew who he was talking about even if the Professor didn't and she tapped the older man's elbow to get his attention, then motioned with her hand for him to give her the phone.

" _Yeah, isn't she watching your house right now? That evil-eyed yawny girl?"_

Haibara deadpanned. "Well excuse _me_ for being an evil-eyed yawny girl," she said acidly.

Kudo coughed and gasped for air like he was choking. _"Wha- Why are you there?! Don't you always call the Professor's inventions stupid?!"_

"Yeah, I didn't want to come, but I also had no desire to stay alone in the house with that eerie, unknown person living next door."

" _Oh, you mean Mr. Subaru Okiya?"_ Kudo said brightly which only worsened her mood. _"Don't worry about him; he seems to be a good person."_ He only thought that because he knew he was Akai. If he were a complete stranger, he never would have vouchsafed for him with no evidence. _"Ah, that's right! Why don't you ask Mr. Subaru to pick you up in his car?"_

Haibara might have made a comment about Subaru _being_ a type of car if she had been in the mood. "Look, I don't know how you see this, but I suspect he's a member of what you refer to as the Black Organization."

" _Mr. Subaru? Impossible,"_ Kudo said dismissively.

"I felt it!" she insisted. "During that Ikkaku Rock case, I felt that pressure coming from him, like that of those from the Organization."

" _It's not like that. If it were, then you and I would already be-"_

"-Perhaps you're keeping him in your house so you can monitor him, and you're using me as bait to see whether he makes a move or not?" she snapped.

" _Idiot! You think I would do that?"_ Kudo exclaimed.

He might if he was certain of catching a member of the Organization with no risky consequences attached.

"At any rate, can't you think of an excuse to get him out of your house?" Haibara asked.

She couldn't say it. She couldn't willingly be vulnerable with him the way she could with Gin. He was a smart boy; why couldn't he understand that she didn't feel safe being scrutinized 24/7 by someone she didn't trust? Who may not even be who Kudo thought he was?

"There's a possibility we might be found out: that both I, who betrayed the Black Organization, and you, who was supposed to have died but are still alive, have been exposed. So, to ensure we're killed discreetly, they may already be on the move and their assassins may already be closing in on us-"

Her tangent was abruptly interrupted by two loud car honks and she turned around to stare at the source. A woman with a white wool hat and dark sunglasses leaned out the driver's side and said, "If you guys are in trouble, I could give you a ride. You don't have any money on you, right?"

"Oh, yes! Thank you so much!" Dr. Agasa said gratefully.

"We can only get you to Tokyo; is that okay?" the woman asked.

"Yes, we were actually heading for Tokyo," Dr. Agasa said.

"Alright, you can have a seat in the back then…" the woman said and Haibara refocused on her phone call with Kudo.

"It looks like we've found a way to get home. By the time we get back, you better have come up with a reason to kick that person out," Haibara said imperiously and hung up on Kudo's protests. She doubted he would do as she'd asked, but it was worth a shot.

"My, you've sure saved us," Dr. Agasa said. However, just as he was passing the passenger door, he did a sharp double-take and stared in alarm at the passenger.

"Ah, he didn't sleep well last night," the woman said in a hushed voice.

"Oh, okay…"

Curious what had caused the Professor to react so strongly, Haibara sidled up to the door and peered up over the open window at the passenger in question. It was definitely a man because of the dark stubble on his chin and though his hood nearly covered the top half of his face, she could see two vertical scar lines on his cheek just below his left eye. The Professor slid into the back with a heavy _oomph_ and Haibara followed after him, closing the door as she heard the lady apologize for the parcel in the back making the space a little tight. Her eyes zeroed in on two holes in the door that she hadn't noticed when it was open. They looked suspiciously like…

"Hey, can I ask you something?" Haibara directed to the woman driver. "How did you know we didn't have any money?"

"They probably heard me talking on the phone just now. I mentioned losing my wallet, so…" Dr. Agasa started to suggest and Haibara gave him a deadpan stare.

"Do you really think that a person can accurately pick out someone's phone conversation on the side of the road while driving?" she asked, putting only the slightest of emphases on 'person' for his benefit. He'd been on this planet as a human long enough now to be familiar with their abilities and limitations.

She turned back to the woman. "I can understand if you pulled over after you passed us, but you pulled over _before_ you drove past us, didn't you?" she asked rhetorically.

"Ah, I pulled over because I noticed you didn't get on the bus at the bus stop," the woman explained.

Haibara raised one disbelieving eyebrow. "So you're saying you heard the phone conversation when you stopped the car?"

"No, when I stopped, I noticed the marks on the old man's chest," she said, looking back at Dr. Agasa.

Obediently, their eyes followed her stare and, sure enough, there were two brown stains with a clean stripe parting the two halves. "Ah, I spilled some cola there," the Professor exclaimed. Haibara found herself wondering how he hadn't noticed before now.

"About that, you spilled cola while you were wearing your seatbelt, weren't you? There's the clean outline of a strap and it must have happened recently, otherwise you would have changed at home, no?"

Haibara decided it must have occurred right before the engine broke down, so he'd been understandably preoccupied with other things. She listened with growing unease as the woman further explained how she'd deduced the exact nature of their current situation. This strange woman was smart, but also intuitive. It was a powerful combination of traits she didn't like in the wrong kind of people.

"That's exactly right!" Dr. Agasa exclaimed, impressed with the woman's deduction.

"I thought so. Is it alright if we get going then, sweetie?" the woman asked her.

"Yes…" Haibara agreed despite her misgivings.

They didn't really have too many options about how to get home without the Professor's wallet and who knew how long it would be before somebody else came along to offer them a ride. The engine turned over and the car started moving forward. Dr. Agasa seemed right at home, but Haibara couldn't manage to relax. She kept telling herself she was just overthinking things, even as her eyes critically scanned the remaining interior of the car. She wasn't picking up on any blood lust from these guys…

 _But you know your sixth sense isn't working correctly right now._

… And those holes – including the new one she just spotted on the back of the driver's seat – and intuitive reasoning didn't necessarily mean they were bad guys…

 _Not even_ _ **Gin's**_ _car has those kinda marks and he's far from innocent._

She shook her head of those thoughts. Gin was also obsessed with his car and would have a conniption if anything bad happened to it. It wouldn't even be because the of the exorbitant repair cost of such a classic model; he was just that in love with it. She still sometimes half-jokingly wondered whether he loved her or the car more. She settled back against the seat and started when her hand felt something odd. It was something crunchy and dusty near the seam line of the seat cover. Curious, she rubbed her finger along the seam line and when she pulled it away, there was a red streak on her skin. Blood? She glanced warily back at the people in the front, moving her gaze from the back of one head to the other. Bullet holes and a blood stain; they were _not_ your normal, average citizens. But… they had offered to give them a ride back to Tokyo and as long as they didn't try and drive off into the middle of the woods to murder them, Haibara saw no real reason to protest… yet… Eventually, they got far enough down the road that they got caught up in the rest of the traffic going into Tokyo.

"What a jam," the woman sighed. "There must have been an accident up ahead. You can take a nap until we get there if you'd like."

"Ah, thank you," Dr. Agasa said.

"By the way, where's your house in Tokyo?" she asked.

"Beika City, second block," he answered.

"I see, Beika City, huh? What a coincidence," the woman said, sounding amused.

"'Coincidence'?"

"We happen to be heading there as well; to Beika City, fifth block, the Mouri Detective Agency."

Haibara stiffened in alarm. The Mouri-!

"Oh, is that so? We actually know-"

Haibara quickly nudged the Professor in the ribs to shut him up and pretended to yawn. "I'm getting tired. Grandpa, won't you take a nap with me?"

"Uh… okay…" Dr. Agasa said uncertainly. She could easily see the confusion on his face, but he trusted her and would wait to ask at a better time.

"Please wake us when we arrive," Haibara told the woman driver.

"Sure," she agreed.

With that settled, Haibara leaned against Dr. Agasa, and he leaned down enough to whisper without being overheard. "What's the matter, Ai?"

"These people are suspicious. You saw it, didn't you? The face of the man in the passenger seat?" she murmured under her breath.

"Well, yes… he had a large scar and an eerie look, but to call him suspicious just because of that…"

"You haven't noticed? There's a hole in the back of the driver's seat and two more in the left door here. I'm afraid these are bullet holes," Haibara said, pointing them out for him. "What's more, I see signs of them trying to clean this up, but in the seams of the seat cover, there are still stains of dried blood."

"Wha-What'd you say?!" he exclaimed in alarm before she could stop him.

"Hm? Is something wrong?" the woman up front asked.

"N-No," Dr. Agasa said nervously.

Not good. "It's okay. Grandpa was talking in his sleep," she explained away, and the two of them settled back to resume their so-called nap. "Anyway, for now, we'll pretend to sleep and observe them. We'll figure out who those two are and why they're going to the Mouri Detective Agency," she whispered, and she felt him nod in affirmation.

Having decided to 'sleep', the car became quiet once more. The inside of the car and the Professor's body – synthetic though it was – were quite warm and there were several times when Haibara nearly felt herself drifting off for real.

After some unknown period of stop-and-go movements as traffic inched slowly forward, the man from the passenger side suddenly spoke up and his voice shook Haibara out of her sleepy stupor. "Hey, what's up? The number of people in the car multiplied while I was sleeping."

"I picked them up along the way; they seem to know Detective Mouri," his companion answered.

"Oh, is that right? Well, that's convenient. Now we won't have to blindly search for his place. Speaking of which, what do you think about that brat?"

"What brat?"

"The one who sticks close to Kogoro Mouri, that boy, Conan Edogawa," the man elaborated.

"Well, while I think he has a pretty sharp mind for a kid, why do you ask?" the woman asked.

"I have a feeling he's the one who's really in control of everything."

Oh… she didn't like the sound of that. Most peoples' impressions of Conan were like that of the woman. People who believed there was more to it were generally trouble because they were _also_ the ones who wouldn't rest until they'd solved the mystery, which would uncover his secret.

"He's a fierce monster, that brat. Well, we are bringing him a surprise. If we treat him well, he may happily blurt out everything."

Bribery? On a kid? What on earth did these people want Kudo to do?! Maybe it was illegal? Or shady? Or just in extremely bad taste?

"But do you really think that'll be enough?" the woman asked.

"Yeah, half-kill is enough for now."

One of Haibara's eyes shot open and her entire body tensed. 'Half-kill'…? But that sounded like torture!

"It's a bit too early, isn't it? They need to wait some for my overkill."

She jolted upright, staring in silent alarm at the pair. O-Overkill?! Was that a euphemism for murder?! These people were after Kudo! She couldn't let them get to him, but she didn't have any tools on her person to assist and her body was too small to subdue them physically. What could she do?!

"Oh dear, did we wake you?" the woman said suddenly and Haibara realized with a start that neither she nor Dr. Agasa were pretending to sleep anymore.

"Oh, no…" she answered in negation, her voice still a little shaky.

"Did you overhear our conversation just now?"

"Conversation?" Haibara repeated innocently. "I only woke up because of Grandpa's snoring. Why? Were you talking about something you didn't want others to hear?"

"No, if you didn't overhear us, then forget it about it," the woman said dismissively.

"But what a traffic jam we have here and we're not even in Tokyo yet," the man commented in disbelief.

"Shall we have tea at a drive-in diner?" the woman suggested. "Maybe after a rest, the traffic will have cleared up some. We'd also like to ask about your relationship to Detective Mouri." She directed the last statement to them.

"Uh…" Dr. Agasa said, glancing uncertainly down at her. After hearing them talk about half-kill and overkill, there was no way they were going to tell them they were close acquaintances of the Detective.

"Of course, that's only if you're not in a hurry to get back home," the sunglasses woman said softly. Was it just Haibara's imagination or had she said that in a vaguely threatening manner?

"Hmph, if you want to get home as quickly as possible, get out of the car and fly back yourself," the man said with a derisive snort.

"Fly back? How could we fly?" Dr. Agasa asked bewildered.

Neither of them answered the Professor's query and Haibara's jaw set in a determined grimace. "Understood. Let's rest at the drive-in diner."

The woman nodded and turned to her companion. "Could you take a look at the map then? It's in the glove compartment."

"Okay…"

The angle that Haibara was sitting at meant she had a good view of the glove box. The man's dark-skinned hand opened it up. There was a map in there and also… 'A gun?!' she thought in alarm.

This situation just kept getting worse and worse! Not only was she and Dr. Agasa stuck in a car with a pair of people intent on torturing Kudo and maybe Mr. Mouri for information before killing them, but they also had a gun in their possession within easy reach while she and the Professor were completely defenseless. How had this happened? And _why_ when she was literally less than a meter away from these people was she _still_ not feeling that awful pressure coming from them? It was one thing when she saw the bullet holes and the blood and just thought they were bad guys without an agenda, but they had since discussed a clear intent to cause harm to someone she knew, and she still felt nothing!

While they slowly inched their way to the diner, Haibara wracked her brains trying to come up with a solution to both get her and the Professor safely away and also somehow stop this dangerous couple from reaching the Detective Agency, but nothing came to mind. She simply didn't have the resources or the personnel to manage such an extraction. She needed help and the only person who _could_ help her right now was Kudo. She decided she would call him once they got to the diner and she could get away from the couple without arousing suspicion. She would debrief him on the situation and then… after that… she would see what Kudo had to say. Haibara didn't like the idea of relying on Kudo for a plan, but her options were severely-limited. It would have to be enough.

"So, how _do_ you two know Detective Mouri?" the woman asked them, seeming to direct her query at Dr. Agasa.

"Oh, uh, well…" Dr. Agasa hedged and glanced down at her, begging for help.

"We just asked him to help us find our cat after she went missing a while ago," Haibara supplied in a more childish pitch. "Grandpa didn't think he'd help us because he's such a great detective and finding missing cats is small potatoes, but his assistant convinced him to help us, and he found her so quickly after he started looking! He really is a great detective."

"Is that right?" the woman asked, sounding like she was indulging her.

"Yes," Haibara said emphatically. "We sometimes see him around the city with his family just because we live close by, but we don't know him that well."

"I see…" the woman trailed off, looking left. "Well, it looks like we're here."

"Finally," the man muttered as they turned into the parking lot.

All four of them got out of the car and Haibara found herself surprised when the man pulled out a long metal cane with arm braces and used it to start walking towards the diner with hobbled steps. His left leg was lame? No, it was more likely a tool to both lower his opponents' guards and strike them down. He probably had full use of both legs, but nobody would expect someone with a disability to be coming after them, no matter if they were heavily-scarred or not.

"Woah, it sure is crowded in here!" Dr. Agasa exclaimed as soon as they entered the establishment.

"I guess others had the same idea we did," the woman said. "Let's find a place to sit."

"There's a table over there," the scarred man said, pointing off to the left.

Now was her chance. Haibara grabbed Dr. Agasa's hand to get his attention. "Grandpa, I have to go to the bathroom first. Can you get me some orange juice?" she asked with a desperate, pleading expression.

"Ah, sure Ai," he said and Haibara smiled brightly up at him.

"Thank you, Grandpa!" she exclaimed and ran off towards the bathrooms. Once she was around the corner and out of sight of the three adults, she quickly pulled out her phone and dialed Kudo's cellphone.

" _Hello?"_

Haibara sighed in relief. "Kudo, thank goodness you answered."

" _Haibara?"_ Kudo said, bewildered. _"What's going on? Didn't you and Dr. Agasa already work out how you were getting home?"_

"We did. Someone heading into Tokyo offered to give us a ride, but I'm afraid there's been a complication," she said.

" _What kind of complication?"_ he asked, sounding cautious but curious too.

"I think they're criminals."

" _What?!"_

"Yeah, there's two of them, a man and a woman. It seems like they want to question you and Detective Mouri about something," she explained.

" _Are they from the Black Organization?!"_

It was a natural question for him to ask given his circumstances, but… "I don't know… They didn't emit the scent like the others, but they have a gun," she said.

And they hadn't recognized her either, but maybe like with the Rainbow Dazzleflies, they just couldn't recognize her as Sherry while she was still a child.

" _Are you still with them right now?"_

"Yeah, we stopped at a drive-in diner on the way into Tokyo and the Professor is having a friendly chat with them right now while I pretended to go to the bathroom so I could contact you," she said, peering carefully around the corner to watch the table without the couple noticing.

Usually, Dr. Agasa wasn't good at relaxing under pressure, but he genuinely seemed to be enjoying himself, despite the danger. She wondered if the couple had somehow gotten him to talk about his inventions. That would do it.

" _Is the Professor alright?"_

"Don't worry, we were sure to say we only got to know you and Detective Mouri through a case about our missing cat-" she said, still watching Dr. Agasa's animated face.

" _-That's not what I meant! If those guys are so dangerous, then you should escape as soon as possible!"_

"Idiot!" she exclaimed, finally turning away from the Professor to focus on the call." Those people said they want to half-kill you. They're heading to your place! We can't just leave them like that!"

" _Half-kill?"_ he said quizzically.

"The man said, and I quote 'Half-killed is enough. It's still too early for overkill'," she explained.

" _Overkill?!"_

She continued as if uninterrupted. "In other words, they'll first keep you barely alive so they can probe you for information. After that, they'll proceed to slaughter you."

" _Hey, are you sure they_ _ **really**_ _aren't from the Black Organization?!"_ Kudo said worriedly.

"I. don't. know," she repeated with emphasis. "If their goal was to find my whereabouts – as the one who betrayed the Organization – it would make sense."

This wasn't good. Her suppressed panic over a genuine threat was causing her to nearly forget her cover regarding a nonexistent threat. Wasn't childhood supposed to be simpler, not more complicated?

" _In any case, I'm rushing to that drive-in diner on my skateboard. I'll be there in less than thirty minutes. Until I arrive, try to stall them as long as you can!"_ Kudo said, and she heard the whirring of the skateboard as it powered up.

"Stall them! How?!"

" _Just say you happened to meet a friend who's going back to Tokyo from Chiba and you decided to go home in their car instead,"_ he said smoothly.

"Chiba?!" she exclaimed in whispered outrage. "We're at the drive-in diner between Yamanashi and Tokyo! Chiba's in the exact opposite direction; a lie like that would be uncovered in no time!"

" _After they realize it's a lie, they'll surely be on guard and try to find you, right?"_

"I see… so before that, we're supposed to hide somewhere in the diner?" Haibara asked, not really understanding how putting dangerous people on their guard was a _good_ thing, but willing to put her faith in Kudo for the time being. "But if they don't see through our lie-"

" _-If they aren't that smart, then there's no need to worry. I'll call Detective Takagi to setup an ambush at the Detective Agency. I'll tell him that they're dangerous people with a gun,"_ Kudo said and he hung up.

Haibara snapped her phone shut and exhaled through her nose. She didn't like this plan one bit. It wasn't even really a plan, just sitting tight and waiting for Kudo to come rescue them which a part of her resented. Apart from that, how was she supposed to stall these people for half an hour, even with telling them that a fake friend from Chiba would be taking them home? Did Conan expect these people to be searching for them the whole time? The diner wasn't _that_ big. She ducked into the bathroom for real to wash her hands for the purpose of wasting time. She wouldn't be able to stay in the bathroom indefinitely, but she would squeeze every second she could out of this before going back to the table.

When Haibara decided she'd been in the bathroom as long as she could, she finally left, her brain still thinking fast to figure out how to stall for even more time. As soon as she turned the corner, an idea came to her. She made an exaggerated start and then made a big show of peering interestedly outside before starting to make her way towards the diner's entrance.

"Ai, where are you going?"

Haibara halted in her tracks and glanced over her shoulder. All three adults were watching her and the only one whose eyes she could see were those of the Professor's. She couldn't read the other two at all.

"I thought I saw something out in the parking lot and I wanted to go take a closer look. I know to watch out for cars and I'll be careful, so you don't need to worry about me," Haibara answered vaguely.

"Well, alright then," Dr. Agasa said, leaving her free to exit the diner and head for the center of the parking lot.

She really hadn't seen anything out here worth being interested in, but it would buy her and Dr. Agasa some extra time and serve as an excellent setup for her to introduce the lie of 'their friend from Chiba' picking them up. She wandered aimlessly around the parking lot for a while, occasionally checking the time on her phone to make sure she didn't stay outside too long. Fifteen minutes after Kudo had called, Haibara went back inside.

"Grandpa, you'll never believe who I just saw!" Haibara exclaimed excitedly as she ran over to the adults and grabbed Dr. Agasa's arm. "It was your old friend from university, Mr. Hirota!"

She saw the Professor's eyes widen and she smiled slightly. Good, he'd caught on. Masami Hirota was the alias the imposter Akemi had used when he had tried to track down his fellow thieves of the one billion yen, but it was also the name of one of the _real_ Akemi's university professors. She'd hoped Dr. Agasa would recognize it because that man was murdered the same night she revealed herself to Conan Edogawa and set the stage to become a new fixture in his life.

"Oh, Hirota, he's here?"

Haibara nodded emphatically. "Yes, I told him our situation and he said he can take us back home from Chiba."

Dr. Agasa's brows furrowed and he made to protest, but she shook her head by the smallest of margins. He closed his mouth and turned back to their companions. "Well, you heard her. It looks like a friend of mine will be able to take us back home the rest of the way."

"That's lucky," the woman said. "It's been a pleasure meeting you."

"Yes, thank you for giving us a ride up until now. Bye," Dr. Agasa said and Haibara grabbed his hand, leading him away from the table and feeling the couple's eyes on their retreating backs. Once they were out of sight, Dr. Agasa whispered, "Ai, what's going on?"

"I called Kudo when I left to go to the bathroom and told him our situation," she whispered back. "He'll be here soon, maybe in ten or fifteen minutes now, and he told me to stall by first telling them a friend from Chiba was going to take us back to Tokyo, and then hiding somewhere in the diner afterward."

"Um, why?"

"I don't know, but we don't have any other option but to trust that Kudo knows what he's doing," she hissed, looking around frantically. Where _could_ they hide? She wished she'd had time to scout the place out first. At this rate, they'd be found in mere seconds and then they'd be in _real_ trouble.

"So, where are we going to hide?" he asked nervously.

Haibara frowned. "We'll have to hide in the bathroom and hope it'll be sufficient long enough for Kudo to get here," she said and started dragging Dr. Agasa in that direction while staying out of sight of the danger couple.

When they reached the men's room, Dr. Agasa protested, "Ai, you can't go in there!"

She gave him a fixed stare. "We're not separating and you can't go in the women's bathroom, so I'm going in. Check to see if there's anyone already in there first, and I'll come in when the coast is clear. Hurry!" she said with an added shove and he stumbled through.

She waited until he gave her an 'all-good' sign and she entered, joining him in one of the empty stalls. Haibara kept opening the door a smidge to peer through the crack and see if anything was happening. Sure enough, it wasn't long before she saw the couple wandering around beyond the bathroom entrance, moving as if searching for something. It was time to call Kudo, so she pulled out her phone and dialed his number, keeping one eye to the door the whole time.

" _Hello? Haibara is that you?"_ he answered promptly.

"Yes, it's just like you said. The two of them saw through us immediately and are looking for us now," she said.

" _Okay, where are you guys?"_

"We're hiding in the bathroom for now. It's only a matter of time before they find us."

" _Perhaps they have a grudge against the old man because of some case he's solved before. Describe them to me,"_ he said.

Haibara pulled back from the door and closed it as she recalled their appearances for Kudo. "The woman's wearing a knit cap and sunglasses. Her bangs fall on both sides of her face. The man is dark-skinned, has stubble, and has a huge scar across his left eye."

" _A huge scar on his left eye?"_

"Yes, and I can say for sure that they aren't normal, innocent people either. They have a gun, there are three bullet holes inside the car, and there were traces of blood they tried to wipe off," she listed off on her fingers.

" _What else have you noticed?"_ he asked.

"Nothing else…"

"Oh yeah, they spoke in a weird way!" Dr. Agasa said abruptly right into the phone.

" _A weird way?"_

Haibara silently handed the phone to Dr. Agasa and he started to explain. "Yes, like telling us to bear with it because it was a bit 'tight', and saying that if we wanted to leave early, we could 'fly' or something. Could it be some kind of code?"

" _Not sure yet, but_ _I'll be there in five minutes! Stay quiet until I get there!"_

A loud voice and banging suddenly broke the silence, "Hey! Are you in there, old man? Answer me if you are!"

It was the man with the scarred face.

"Looks like we don't have that privilege. The man's knocking on the bathroom doors one by one. What should we do?" Haibara whispered as she took the phone back from the Professor. She waited, but it was quiet on the other end. "Hey, Kudo?" Still silence. "Kudo!"

The stall door banged and she jumped. "Hey!" The man had reached their stall. "What's wrong? Aren't you gonna answer me?!" he yelled.

"Kudo…!" she whispered desperately.

" _It's alright, Haibara,"_ Kudo said calmly. _"Just use an adult-like voice and scream that the stall's still in use. He should back off then, right? He'll be distracted from searching for you guys if he finds out there's a woman inside."_

"Th-that's true…" she said shakily, staring at the shuddering stall door.

"Hey!"

Haibara took a deep breath… and screamed, "HOW RUDE! CAN'T YOU TELL I'M USING THIS?! YOU FREAKING PERVERT!"

Her scream echoed off the bathroom walls and she breathed heavily. The Professor was staring at her stunned and the man outside the stall had fallen silent too.

"Ah, excuse me, my bad…" he said apologetically and she listened to the tapping sound of his cane on the tiles as he left the bathroom.

Haibara gave a sudden start. "Wa-wait a minute! This is the men's room, you know!" she directed to Kudo still on the phone.

" _I figured. The Professor couldn't possibly enter the ladies' room,"_ Kudo said, still sounding unflappably calm.

"You figured?! Wouldn't he realize it was us by my voice?!" she exclaimed. Had he hit his head sometime during the conversation and completely forgotten her situation?! What was the point of hiding if they now exactly knew where they were?!

" _Isn't there a window or something you can use to get out of the bathroom?"_ Kudo asked, changing the subject and completely disregarding her question.

She opened the stall door and looked around the bathroom. "Y-Yeah, there is…" she answered slowly. Her heart was still beating way too rapidly in her chest.

" _You and the Professor should escape through there."_

Haibara had no clue how in the _world_ this was going to help, but she motioned for the Professor to follow her and opened the bathroom window with one hand. She grabbed onto the window ledge with her free arm, choosing not to remove the phone from her ear, and hoisted herself up onto the frame with ease. She dropped down to the ground in a full crouch and Dr. Agasa tumbled clumsily after her.

"Okay, we're out. Now what?!" Haibara demanded breathlessly.

" _Let's see… If you look around, I think…"_

A shocked gasp escaped her. The woman with the sunglasses stood directly before her, staring down at them with her own cellphone to her ear.

"… _that lady will be waiting and soon…"_

 _Tap… Tap…_ A horrible sense of dread filled her body as she turned her head and saw the hooded, scarred man with the cane come around the corner of the building with a cellphone to his own ear.

"… _the man should also appear."_

They were there, both of them, and she was cornered with no way to escape. Her panic was so great, she could hardly breathe. Kudo was supposed to protect her and instead he had led her right into a trap!

" _Just give up and surrender,"_ his voice said mockingly over the phone.

"Give up?!" she screamed hysterically into the device, unable to think, unable to move, and feeling utterly betrayed.

"Don't worry!" this time his voice didn't come from the phone, but from around the other corner near the woman. Conan Edogawa skidded to a stop on his skateboard and smiled at her. "These two are police officers!"

"P-Police…?!" Haibara stammered in breathless confusion, her brain unable to reconcile what he'd just said with the bone-deep terror she still felt pounding in her veins.

()()()()()

Haibara was glad that Kudo was going away to Nagano, far away from her, because the very _last_ thing she wanted to see right now was his stupid face. It was bad enough that she'd mistaken _police officers_ for potential criminals because they were talking about stupid, _stupid_ _ **botamochi**_ with words like _half-kill_ , but then he'd gone and made her look like a complete _moron_ and scared her _literally_ half-to-death all because he wanted to be _dramatic_ with the reveal. Then he had the freaking _nerve_ to smile proudly at his work. She was relieved, furious, humiliated, and she wanted nothing more than to slap him into next week for that stupid stunt.

"Now Ai, there's no need to continue to be so mad at Shinichi," Dr. Agasa said placatingly as they entered the front gate and walked up the drive to the house.

"I'm not mad. Did I say I was?" she said archly.

"Well, no, but-"

"-Then stop," she cut him off as they reached the front door and the Professor started fishing around in his pockets for his house keys. "I don't want to talk about him for the rest of the day."

As soon as the door was unlocked, Haibara stepped through the entry way and headed directly for the basement with the intent of shutting herself up in there for the rest of the afternoon. She slammed the door shut and leaned against it. Hot tears pricked at the corners of her eyes and she wiped them away furiously. She was mad. _Very_ mad at Kudo. She had trusted him and put her faith in his protection as she had done before. However, once he had determined she and the Professor weren't in danger, not only had he not _bothered_ to tell her so, but then he had tricked her into being surrounded by them and told her to give up. _Because it was_ _okay_.When Vermouth was at large, Kudo had promised to protect her if she didn't run away and even went so far as to stay at Dr. Agasa's house with her while she was sick in order to keep Vermouth at bay. Where had _that_ boy been today?

Haibara felt miserable and drained. She needed to be able to rely on Kudo and trust him, especially with her sixth sense acting up, but how could she when he wouldn't tell her things regarding her own safety? He still hadn't told her about Akai (who was _still_ living next door, damn it), nor had he told her until the last minute about the true identities of the people she and the Professor had hitchhiked with. She decided to take a nap, hoping she would feel better afterward, though she strongly doubted it would help in any way that mattered.

* * *

 _Next time on We Are the Men in Black! Chapter 15: The Secret Order From London! Not sure when it'll be up. I have the outline already made, but it probably won't be done before the end of the year. So, in case this is my last chance to talk to my readers, Happy Winter Holidays everyone!_


	15. The Secret Order From London

**Author's Note: Surprise! Merry Christmas everyone! I got the next chapter done! I was thinking of waiting to post it either tomorrow or on Christmas, but I figured most people would probably be spending the time with their families and I didn't want an email notification about this story to detract from that.**

 **This chapter's alternate title would probably be 'Some of Haibara's Backstory!'**

* * *

The Secret Order From London

When Haibara woke up that morning, she had no idea where she was. Her first impression was pink and there was a large stuffed whale in her face. It all came back to her moments later through the morning mind haze and she remembered.

"Oh, right. Yoshida allowed me to stay at her place while the Professor's away," she muttered and took a better look around the room.

She'd seen it last night of course, but the details seemed to have escaped her. Everything really was pink in here and the room was full of cute plushies. There was even a painting of a European-style maiden on a unicorn.

"A huge difference compared to my room," she commented aloud. Even when she had been Ayumi's age, her room had been nothing like this. She'd been a genius child living in a secret world where the existence of aliens was as natural to her as breathing. Nothing about her life had been normal.

There was a quiet knock on the door and then it opened. It was Ayumi. She was already dressed for the day in a yellow t-shirt and blue shorts. "Ai, you're awake?" she asked.

"Yeah…" Haibara answered, still feeling a little out of sorts from having just woken up.

"Papa and Mama had urgent errands to run, so they went out," Ayumi explained as she fully came into the room.

If they were already out running errands, how long had she been asleep?

"Mama's made some sandwiches, so let's eat together!" Ayumi exclaimed and grabbed her wrist, dragging her out of bed and pushing her out of the room.

Haibara was still trying to process that Ayumi's mom had made them _sandwiches_. Was that a typical breakfast food in the Yoshida household or had she really slept late enough for it to be lunchtime already? She supposed that without having any science projects to distract her, her body – child's body that it was – had decided to overcompensate for the lost sleep time. She washed her face and got dressed (wherein she finally got a glance at a clock and discovered it was already after eleven) before joining Ayumi in the living room where a large plate of sandwiches was sitting on the table. Her stomach growled audibly as soon as she saw them and her face flushed in embarrassment while Ayumi giggled and offered her a sandwich.

"Here, you can have the first one since you haven't eaten anything yet today."

"Oh…! Thank you, Yoshida," Haibara said, accepting the food and taking a bite. It was an egg sandwich and it was quite good.

"Do you like it, Ai?" the younger girl asked hopefully.

"Yes, your mother's pretty good at cooking," she answered.

Ayumi giggled happily. "I love ham sandwiches and egg sandwiches, so Mama always makes these for me. What kind of sandwich do you like, Ai?"

She still wasn't fully awake yet, so the question took her off-guard for a moment. "Hm? What kind do I like? I guess…" she paused and smiled fondly as she recalled one of her most favorite foods from the early days of her childhood while growing up in America. "… Peanut butter and blueberry jam," she said at last.

"Peanut butter and blueberry jam?"

"Yeah," she said and began to explain what it was and how to make them. "You spread each on one side of separate pieces of bread and stick them together, and that's how you get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's a staple in American lunches. Even now, I can't help but yearn for that sandwich from time to time. However, there was one time I was eating some at the Professor's house, and he was looking at me with such big, pleading puppy eyes that I gave up eating them."

Adjusting to Japanese culture had surprisingly not been nearly as difficult for Haibara as adjusting to the food had been. Akemi had already taught her about the lack of a formal dress code, the alcohol codenames, the greater diversity of agents and divisions, and the fact that the agents could still have real lives outside of the MiB in the Japanese branch. Apart from those four things, the differences between the American and Japanese branches of the MiB were not as exaggerated as in other institutions and Akemi helped prevent her from making too many social faux pas outside of it. The food was not something she could so readily adapt to, though she'd eventually managed, and now Haibara still had occasional cravings for a sandwich she used to eat for lunch so often, she thought she'd become bored of it.

"I see. If Dr. Agasa were to eat them, he'd become even more overweight, right?" An interesting query given that his body was a machine and yet, it did seem to gain weight when he ate too much unhealthy food. "Hey, let's go out and get some!" Ayumi exclaimed.

Haibara frowned slightly. It was a nice gesture… "But what they have in the nearby supermarket is completely different from what I had in the States. It's no good if they're not from an imported food store."

"I know just the place that's on the opposite side of Beika Station!" Ayumi said, undeterred and grabbed her hand "Let's go and buy some! I want to try it too!"

Haibara looked down at the unfinished sandwich in her hand and smiled in spite of herself. Why not? Shouldn't she be allowed to indulge herself on occasion? "You're right. I'm in the mood for some as well after such a long time," she agreed.

"Then we should get going right now! Oh, but before we do that…" Ayumi trailed off with a mischievous smile and dragged her away from the sandwiches, leading her to a closed door.

She opened it and Haibara stiffened as soon as she saw the massive bed and the mature, formal décor. "Yoshida, is this…?" she said uncertainly.

"Yup, this is my parents' room," Ayumi said, answering the unfinished question.

"Are you sure it's okay to be in here?"

"It's fine, it's fine," Ayumi said, waving her worries aside and brought her over to a vanity lined from one side to the other with more makeup, skin, and hair products than even Haibara would have known what to do with. Did her mother work for television?

"Your mother's makeup cabinet?" Haibara inquired.

"Yes, I want to try wearing this just this once! Please do it with me, Ai!" Ayumi begged.

"But why do we have to apply makeup?" she asked, not really understanding the appeal. She could do it, of course, but putting on makeup and then taking it off was also a lot of work.

"The supermarket in front of the train station is a fancy store that celebrities always go to. That's why we have to make ourselves look like celebrities too," Ayumi explained with her forthright childish logic.

"But still…" she said hesitantly.

Ayumi was insistent however. "Why not? Let's try it out!"

Haibara stared back at the mirror and all of the different containers neatly lined up. She gave in with a soft sigh and picked up a bottle of foundation. "You're right. It's been too long for me, anyway."

"What?! Ai, you've already tried putting on makeup before?" Ayumi exclaimed.

"Eh? N-no, I didn't mean it that way…" Haibara said hastily. She didn't know what was wrong with her today. She seemed stuck in her memories and if she kept this up, she'd end up saying something _really_ odd that she wouldn't be able to so readily dismiss.

"Phew, I was so shocked," Ayumi said with a dramatic sigh. "Sometimes you mumble weird things, Ai. Same for Conan, though."

Haibara gave a nervous laugh, having nothing to say to that. She'd noticed, huh?

Ayumi seemed unbothered by the lack of explanation though. "Mama won't return home until this evening, so let's give ourselves a grand transformation!" she said excitedly and grabbed randomly at the first thing in front of her, which happened to be blush.

Haibara watched her briefly before turning to the foundation she was still holding. She had to admit her mother had a well-stocked makeup cupboard, but it probably wasn't a good idea for her to leave it all out in the open like this within reach of kids. Well, since she was there, she would make sure Ayumi didn't do anything dangerous with the makeup. She decided to forego the foundation, remembering that she was already wearing some on her left cheek to cover the bullet scar (getting around _that_ when she'd been washing her face with Ayumi watching had been a special challenge), and picked up a tube of dark pink lipstick instead.

"Done!" Ayumi exclaimed after a while. "How is it, Ai?"

Haibara stared in stunned horror at the mess Ayumi had made of her face. She'd used the darkest blue eye shadow to color completely around her eyes, the red lipstick was smeared all over her mouth, and the blush was so heavy on her cheeks, it looked like she'd applied it with a stamp instead of a brush.

"Maybe I put on too much eye shadow?" Ayumi wondered as she looked back in the mirror.

"R-right…" Haibara said weakly. There was really no polite way to tell her young friend that she looked like a clown. "I think a more natural look suits you."

"Natural?" Ayumi repeated in confusion.

"Don't worry, I'll do it for you," Haibara said as she quickly scanned the containers for some makeup remover, knowing there had to be some if Ayumi's mom had all of this.

She found it and started to remove the excess, letting herself get lost in her thoughts again as she worked. Everyone had to start somewhere and in her own experience of putting on makeup for the first time, she'd done no better than Ayumi and she'd been thirteen instead of seven. Akemi had also had no problem telling her how ridiculous she looked and had never let her live it down, but at least she had been willing to show her how to apply it properly afterward…

" _Shiho, what did you do?!"_

 _Shiho froze and whirled around to find Akemi staring at her from the door of her room with a mixed expression that she couldn't identify. Her eyes were wide and her jaw hung open, but the corners of her lip kept twitching._

" _I… Well, I… I was… I just… Uh…" Shiho stammered as she looked around for anything, literally_ _ **anything**_ _that she could use to somehow explain why she was sitting at her sister's vanity with her face covered in her makeup._

 _She had just admitted defeat to herself and was ready to accept her sister's reprimand when Akemi suddenly started laughing! She was doubled-over, holding her stomach with both arms, and there were even tears in my eyes! Every time she seemed to get her breath back, she would look at her again, and her laughter would redouble. The alarm Shiho had felt upon her sister's initial discovery was converted into embarrassment as she slowly accepted the fact that she wasn't in trouble, or at least not as much as she'd feared._

 _Eventually, Akemi managed to stop laughing long enough to wheeze, "Shiho, you… oh my god, you look like a clown!" Then she promptly dissolved into another laughing fit, leaving Shiho feeling even more defensive for it._

" _Are you done?" she asked bitterly when Akemi_ _ **finally**_ _seemed to have gotten a hold of herself._

 _Akemi nodded and said, still with a laughing smile on her face, "Would you like me to help you get that off before someone else sees you?"_

 _Shiho's eyes widened and darted to the doorway, trying to see around Akemi. "Is anyone else here?" she asked._

 _Akemi shook her head and approached, dropping her handbag on the vanity next to all of the makeup. "No, it's just the two of us, but it would have been much worse for you if I had come back with Dai or Gin and Vodka, right?"_

 _At the mention of Gin, Shiho stiffened, and she nodded mutely in response to her sister's question. As embarrassing as it was for Akemi to make fun of her,_ _ **Gin**_ _seeing her like this would have been mortifying. She sat perfectly still as Akemi began to wipe all of the makeup off her face._

" _So as your sister, I have to ask: why were you trying to put on makeup in the first place?" Akemi asked gently._

 _Shiho frowned at her. "You're the one who's started wearing it a lot now," she retorted. "I almost never see you leave home without some on, even if you're just going to do your shift at the restaurant you still insist on working at."_

 _Akemi sighed patiently. "I've told you before, I like working there, Shiho. I get to interact with normal, carefree people blissfully unaware of the secret world existing hidden before their very eyes. It's a surreal experience, you should try it too; it would be good for you to see how the other side lives. And as for the makeup, sure I may not see Dai every day, but he has a habit of turning up when I least expect him and is it wrong that I want to look nice for my boyfriend?"_

 _The mention of said boyfriend caused Shiho to frown further and cross her arms. "You know his real name's not Dai, so why do you still use it? He's not even a real boyfriend, he's just using you to try and infiltrate the Organization. Gin told me."_

" _ **Gin**_ _should mind his own business about personal matters that don't concern him," Akemi said acidly, which caused Shiho to prickle defensively._

" _It_ _ **is**_ _his business," Shiho insisted. "He's trying to protect the MiB and Shuichi Akai is trying to undermine him."_

 _Akemi looked at her then and smiled in a semi-exasperated way. "I'm glad you've become fonder of Gin-" Shiho tensed briefly. "-since you first arrived here in Japan, but there's no need for you to defend him from me. He's my friend and he does an excellent job of protecting the MiB's secret existence, but ever since he found out Dai's true identity is that of an FBI agent, he has not stopped hounding me about not letting him know too much or being careful not to get captured."_

 _Personally, Shiho felt Gin was right to worry. The way Akemi talked about 'Dai' and acted around him, she was being so airheaded and sickeningly sweet that she'd probably walk right into any trap he might set with hardly a thought. It made her want to vomit. She also hoped that it wasn't contagious because she was afraid Gin would lose any respect he might have for her if she started acting loony like that._

" _Anyway, makeup. That's what we were talking about before we got off track. I've been wearing makeup regularly because I want to look nice for my boyfriend, but you're only thirteen, Shiho. You don't have to start worrying about makeup and boys for a while yet."_

 _Unbidden, Shiho thought of Gin with his long, silvery blond hair and foreboding presence. Just one look from those icy eyes was enough to turn her into frozen fire. Privately, she disagreed with Akemi's assessment of her dating prospects, but there was no way she was going to tell her that. Not when the guy she liked happened to be ten years older than her and was also Akemi's friend. Still…_

" _Maybe not…" Shiho agreed slowly, "but maybe you could teach me how to apply makeup now so that I'll have plenty of time to practice, and I won't make a complete fool of myself when I_ _ **do**_ _start dating…?" she suggested._

 _Akemi hummed in thought and then smiled. "Sure, why not? We've already got all the stuff out and you're so independent already, I don't think you want me putting on the makeup for your first date, huh?"_

 _Shiho blushed and nodded. No… no, definitely not._

"Wow, I look like a completely different person! You're really good at makeup, Ai!" Ayumi exclaimed happily once she saw herself in the mirror after Haibara had finished.

"It's because you have large eyes and a cute face to begin with, Yoshida," she said as she started applying makeup to her own face.

"Thanks, Ai!" Ayumi said and hopped off the vanity seat, running pell mell out of the room without a word of explanation for her behavior.

Haibara shrugged and resumed her work. She decided she would use a little eyeliner, but she would ditch the mascara altogether. Her eyelashes were dark enough, she wasn't looking to impress anyone, and it was a pain to clean off anyway. After Akemi's lesson, she'd practiced applying makeup, but she had not been nearly so confident in her choices the first time she'd decided to wear it in public while on her first date with Gin. She'd had so many concerns that seemed silly in hindsight but were perfectly reasonable at the time. Was it too much? Was it too little? Did she look mature enough or did she just look like a kid that was trying too hard? She had not really been in love with him yet, but she _did_ have a huge crush on him and she had craved his good opinion of her more than anything.

She finished with the eye shadow and picked up the thin pencil eyeliner. Only at her current age could she appreciate the potential danger she'd been in if Gin had been more unsavory. He had seen her as a budding adult rather than a growing child, and that was attractive to any teenager, but he could have done _so_ much damage to her young heart and her self-esteem if he'd been insensitive about her age. If anything about her displeased him, she would have changed it in a heartbeat. If he'd told her she was starting to get a little pudgy, she'd have gone on a diet or irrationally foregone eating altogether. When he'd told her she looked beautiful in red, her already-favorite color immediately predominated her closet. On their first date, he'd told her she looked beautiful with the makeup on in the same breath that he confessed he preferred her natural beauty. If he hadn't done that, she would have worn makeup all the time, as she wouldn't have believed herself to be attractive to him without it.

But he _had_ been careful and sensitive, and gone slow with her, giving her time for her to grow, both physically and emotionally, and for her crush on him to either die or mature into love. He didn't even kiss her until after they'd been dating for nine months, and even then, it only happened because of her heated accusation that he wasn't taking their relationship seriously. Haibara put down the eyeliner with a fond sigh and inspected her appearance in the mirror. Yes, with her youthful age, it could have easily gone all wrong between them, but she was lucky… Lucky that Gin was the kind of man he was…

"Wow, you look so pretty, Ai!" Ayumi exclaimed, startling Haibara out of her reverie.

"You think so?" she asked with a slight smile as she turned around to face her friend. "Yoshida, what is that?"

Ayumi had changed into a cute pink dress and was holding up another of the same size in periwinkle blue. "A dress for you to wear," Ayumi said as if this was obvious.

"But I'm fine with what I'm wearing right now," Haibara protested.

Ayumi's expression suddenly became cross. "That won't do. If you're going to wear makeup, then you have to look your best and since you don't have anything here, I'm letting you borrow one of mine. Besides, I think the blue would look much better with your reddish-brown hair than with any of my other pink ones."

Ayumi had a point about the color. Haibara always thought of red as her color and made a point of wearing it regularly, but blue in any shade looked good on her too. She personally preferred the darker shades as an adult as they tended to look more formal and mature, but she could see the appeal of the lighter shades, especially while she was still physically seven.

"Alright, I'll wear it," she caved and shed her clothes while carefully turning herself away from Ayumi in such a way that it wasn't obvious she was trying to hide her front.

She could not remember if Ayumi had ever been in a position to see the scars on her leg, arm, and shoulder where Gin's bullets had struck her on the roof of the Haido City Hotel, but if she had, she had not known what they were nor asked. If she hadn't though, then Haibara didn't _want_ her to know or ask. She slipped the dress on over her head, careful not to ruin her makeup and found it fit her very well. It was light and smooth like satin and it flowed between her fingers with ease. It was a very nice dress.

"Thank you, Yoshida," she said with a smile.

Ayumi beamed at her and helped her gather her regular clothes to stuff them in Ayumi's room until they returned. Then the two dolled-up little girls left the condo via the elevator and Ayumi led the way to Beika Station since she knew the quickest way from her home. It wasn't long before Haibara noticed they had a tail and she smiled in amusement at how conspicuous Genta and Mitushiko were being in their attempts to stay out of sight while following them. They had a long way to go before they'd be able to successfully sneak up on her.

Ayumi eventually noticed them too and she said quietly, "Hey, Ai…"

"Yeah, I know," she reassured her, glancing back over her shoulder at the two boys. "Although I don't know what those two are up to-" She broke off with a startled gasp.

She'd felt it; that pressure again! Short and sharp, but definitely present! Her eyes darted everywhere and they fell on a man in a black suit wearing sunglasses and talking on a cellphone. His clothes made him stand out to her as much as his behavior. Everyone else nearby was acting normal. Had the pressure come from him? Who was he? She didn't recognize him. Was he another member of the Men in Black that Pandora had gotten a hold of?

"Ai, what's wrong?" Ayumi asked worriedly, noticing how she'd paused.

"Oh, no, nothing. Let's go," Haibara said more brusquely than usual and resumed walking, but not without one last cautious glance over her shoulder at the man in black.

The pressure had gone as suddenly as it had come, just like it did the two times she felt it from Okiya, but what did that _mean_?! She was tired of no longer knowing what to make of her sensing ability, but didn't know how fix it. Ayumi took her to the store and her eyes widened in surprise. She didn't realize it was so big. Since neither of them had been inside the store before, Haibara held Ayumi's hand and held the basket with her other hand as she peered down the aisles for the ingredients she was looking for. If they had arranged everything in the same order she had seen in other stores where she'd bought peanut butter and jam in Japan, then both of them should be…

"Ah, there they are!" she exclaimed, pointing them out to Ayumi sitting on opposite sides of the same aisle."

"Yay, I'll get the peanut butter!" she yelled and dashed off down the aisle to the brown, nutty spread.

Haibara followed behind at a more sedate pace, glancing curiously at the labels of the jars once she approached the jams. They really had all kinds: the classic strawberry as well as blackberry, raspberry, huckleberry, and even peach. Her greenish-blue eyes lit up when she saw the first label declaring itself to be a blueberry jam and she looked over the rest of them for prices and sizes. There weren't many; even in the States, blueberry jam wasn't as common as some of the others, but she could make do with the available options.

"And here's the blueberry jam," Haibara said as she put the jar into the basket next to the peanut butter Ayumi had procured.

A quick glance at the ingredients list told her it was made of just peanuts and there was no palm oil present. Good. Ever since Akemi had that Environmental Studies class in university and told her about the Indochinese rainforests being destroyed to create palm oil plantations akin to the old tobacco or cotton plantations of the American southeast, Haibara had tried to be diligent about making sure she purchased no products with palm oil in them.

Akemi… "When I was younger, probably around Ayumi's age now, these were my favorites," she said softly to herself.

She had not grown up with Akemi. Their parents had died when she was still a baby and her sister already eight years old. At first, Pisco had taken over raising her and Akemi as a favor to her parents who had been his friends, but problems began to develop early on. Akemi was active and spirited, and she was enough of a handful for an old man who was already a high-ranking, full-time MiB agent _and_ the president of a car manufacturing company to boot. An already-ornery, headstrong, scarily-intelligent two-year-old Shiho just proved to be too much for the old man, and Akemi at ten was in no position to look after her either.

There was nobody else in the Japanese branch of the MiB able or willing to take on the task of raising such a difficult child, so she'd been sent off to the American branch where an older man named Agent K grudgingly took her under his wing. Kay was the only parental figure she had in her formative years, even though he acted more like a strict teacher, while his arguably more casual partner, Jay, was an annoyance she had no respect for. Kay didn't put up with her nonsense and taught her everything he knew about the different alien species and the Men in Black. He was also the reason she ate peanut butter and blueberry jelly sandwiches for lunch all the time. He couldn't cook and it was one of the few simple things he knew how to make. Before she had the chance to learn the more practical applications of her alien knowledge from him, the orders came down from on high for her to be transferred back to Japan where she belonged.

Just like that, Kay shipped her off halfway across the world with only a short pep talk right before putting her on the plane. "You've already graduated from university, kid, and Japan thinks I did a good enough job curbing your stubborn, disobedient tendencies that they want you back. God knows Japan's still not ready for you though, so give 'em hell, Tiger."

That was the last thing Kay had said to her and she hadn't heard from him, Jay, or anyone else in the American branch since. Not even a "You adjusting alright, kid?" or a "Happy Birthday" or anything. She hadn't been especially close to him, but it still hurt a little.

Still, the fact of the matter was that although she had spoken with her sister and met her a few times when Akemi came to visit her in America, she had not lived with her for an extended period of time and feared that despite the blood connection, they would have nothing in common and wouldn't get along. In the beginning, it seemed to start out that way, but then everything started to change when Akemi asked her what she wanted for lunch one day, and she had wistfully told her a peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwich. Never having had one, Akemi asked how to make it, so she told her and Akemi left her alone only to come back half an hour later with a wind-swept look and a bag of groceries she held up and said "I hope it's alright." She'd gone out in the cold, windy March weather just to buy her the supplies for her favorite sandwich, and to surprise her further, Akemi wanted to try the American-style lunch. Not only did her older sister try it, but she loved it and declared they should make them a regular meal.

Yes, it had been this very sandwich that she and Akemi had first bonded over that then paved the way for the continued growth of their relationship.

"I've never seen so many different kinds of peanut butter before," Ayumi commented as they started making their way to the checkout counter.

Haibara gave a wry smile. "Oh, this is nothing. In American supermarkets, they have dozens of different brands on display for everything, even for peanut butter. Some stores even have machines that can squeeze out peanut butter the same as you would for soft serve ice cream."

"Really? Sounds interesting!"

They really were, and they weren't common either. Just as they reached the end of the aisle and were starting to turn around the corner, Haibara felt the eerie sensation of being watched and her eyes fell on a woman two aisles over dressed all in black and wearing shades. Instinctively, she looked behind and saw the same black-suited man from earlier. Two of them so close by? Were they after her? But she wasn't sensing anything dangerous from either of them. She clenched her hand into a fist and turned back around, but the woman was gone and Haibara didn't see her nearby. Where did she go? She frowned worriedly and hurried Ayumi to the checkout counter, eager to get out of the store as quick as possible.

"Are you okay, Ai?" Ayumi asked her.

"I'm fine," she reassured her automatically, still thinking of the black-clothed man and woman. "I thought I saw something, but it was just my imagination."

They had everything they needed for the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches now, but with those strange people appearing, she wasn't keen to be out in the open leading them directly to Ayumi's condo. She spotted a shop full of trinkets just ahead and Ayumi gladly agreed to make a stop in there before heading back home when she suggested it. The younger girl was quite content to amuse herself by looking at everything and it gave Haibara a chance to calm down to think.

She had definitely sensed something from the man while on the sidewalk, brief as it was, but then felt nothing from him in the store or from the woman. They were dressed to similarly to not be accomplices and it was difficult to make a case for them not to be following her and Ayumi. She didn't think they were MiB agents; they were behaving too conspicuously, even if they were brainwashed by Pandora. Wearing black was not a crime, or else gothic teenagers everywhere would be imprisoned. It was a formal color that even perfectly-respectable, decent people wore. Still, she couldn't have faked sensing that intense pressure from that man, so what was it? Haibara let her thoughts wander back into her past once more, back when she was still new to Japan… before Akai came into Akemi's life… before she trusted Gin… back to the first time she had first sensed that malicious aura…

 _Shiho's cellphone started ringing and she pulled it out, grimly wondering which displeased person she was going to end up talking to. "Hello?" she said._

" _ **Sherry, where the hell are you right now? You were supposed to call me to take you home if you stayed at the lab late and Akemi couldn't get you,"**_ _a man's voice answered._

 _Shiho grimaced. Great, it was Gin._

" _I figured you were probably busy and I didn't want to bother you," Shiho lied. "I'm not a child; I'm thirteen and I'm old enough to be able to get home by myself without being chaperoned everywhere."_

" _ **And how did the clearly-knows-better-than-everyone-else teenager decide she was getting home tonight?"**_ _Gin said snidely._

 _Shiho scowled and snapped, "A taxi if you must know."_ _Dead silence met her response and the crease in her brow lessened slightly. "You still there?"_

" _ **What's the taxi company's name?"**_ _he said suddenly in a low, serious voice._

" _Uh, Green Tokyo…" she said slowly, wondering at his abrupt change in tone._

" _ **And the cab's ID number?"**_

" _43314; why do you want to know?" she asked._

 _Gin didn't answer, but he didn't hang up either. She squinted her eyes in annoyance and pressed the phone as close to her ear as she could. She could make out a faint tapping sound coming through the line; was someone on a computer near him?_

 _Shiho huffed, "Look, thank you for looking out for me on my sister's behalf, but I've already got my transportation covered for the night, so you don't need to worry about me anymore. Goodnight."_

 _That seemed to get his attention._ _ **"Wait, Sherry, where-?"**_

 _She hung up on him midsentence and smirked. There was just something satisfying about cutting off that stiff, stone-faced guy. She had no idea how he and Akemi were friends; they seemed like complete opposites. Shiho looked up from her phone and frowned slightly. She hadn't been paying attention to her surroundings and they were in a part of the city that she didn't recognize. The prickling feeling under her skin became more insistent, but she ignored it. She'd only been in Japan for a month and Tokyo was a huge city, so of course there were going to be parts she didn't recognize. It didn't make her feel comfortable though._

" _Hey, are you sure we're heading in the correct direction?" she asked the driver tentatively._

" _Absolutely," the woman answered with certainty. "We're taking a shortcut to get there."_

 _Shiho wasn't sure about that considering she should be home in less than ten minutes now, but she chose not to argue about it. The driver seemed to know what she was doing. Still, she kept her greenish-blue eyes fixed on the scenery outside the window, searching for the first sign of something familiar. Nothing popped out at her though and her sense of unease grew. It felt like worms were writhing restlessly beneath her skin. When Shiho noticed that the street they were driving on was in a distinctly poorer area of the city, she knew they were going in the wrong direction and was forced to admit that she was in trouble._

 _She quickly pulled out her phone to call for help when it was snatched out of her hands by something gray and rubbery and she released a startled yelp. She looked up and a shocked scream escaped her. Her phone was being held in the air by a large gray, single-clawed tentacle waving about. The tentacle squeezed the phone until it snapped. Just like that, it was crushed into pieces._

" _Let's not be hasty,_ _sweetheart," the woman purred as the tentacle shook her phone fragments to the floor. "We girls haven't had the chance to get to know each other better yet. Let's not ruin it by inviting someone to spoil our fun."_

 _Shiho found herself in a full-blown panic. The prickling sensation she had felt earlier towards the woman had grown into a pounding, pulsing sensation throughout her whole body. It was literally screaming at her to run, even if that meant throwing herself out of a moving vehicle. Her fear was so great, she didn't even question the impulse and she rolled the window all the way down. She was already halfway out the window when the car braked so fast and hard that she was thrown off-balance and her side collided painfully with the edge of the door frame. Shiho only spared a second to catch her breath before she finished her mad scramble out of the cab through the window, which was much less painful with the taxi in a stop. She cleared the cab and took off at a run, not knowing where she was or where she was going, and had no thought in her head except putting as much space between herself and the alien behind her._

 _However, she hadn't gone more than three meters when something caught her ankles and her feet flew out from under her. She hit the asphalt chest first with her palms splayed out in front of her, and she felt the wind knocked out of her lungs. She fought to breathe and her body was stunned from the impact, unable to move. The first coherent thought she had was that she didn't hit her chin. At least she didn't hit her chin. She winced as she tried to move her hands to get up when her wrists were grabbed and she was hauled upward._

" _No! Let go of me! Let- mmph!" Her shrieks were muffled by another rubbery tentacle that wrapped around her head and covered her mouth._

 _Shiho struggled to move in her captor's grip, but she was airborne, being held up by the tentacles on her wrists and the ones on her ankles further restrained her movements._

" _Hmm, that house looks nice and cozy," the alien holding her said and carried her forward towards an old rundown house with a smashed front door, broken glass in the window frames, and a gaping hole in the roof._

 _As soon as they were in the front room, Shiho was turned around by the tentacles and pinned to the floor. There were actually six tentacles, five of them were holding her, and all of them had punctured through the woman's sides like worms in an apple, the sight alone making her gag._

" _Now that we have some privacy, I can shed this awful skin," the tentacled she-alien said and Shiho watched in silent horror as she used her sixth tentacle to pull on some invisible zipper at the back of her head and a large, slimy, gray squid-looking creature with one eye wriggled out from the skin._

 _The arms went slack, revealing two more tentacles, and once the skin was down around the hips, another two tentacles stepped out of the legs and the human skin collapsed to the ground like a one-piece suit. That made ten tentacles, and with the claws on the end of them and the one eye, that made this alien a Tethuidian. The Tethuidian released a heavy sigh of relief and Shiho screamed, heedless of the tentacle over her mouth stifling the sound. As with any of the Earth's natural cephalopods, the mouth was a beak at the base of the body surrounded by all of the tentacles, but no Earth-born squid or octopus had a beak full of serrated teeth like a shark!_

" _Ahh, that's much better. Now then, let's get rid of those nasty-tasting clothes you humans insist on wearing," the Tethuidian said as her arm tentacles grabbed the front of her pants with her claws._

 _Shiho squirmed desperately as the fabric of her pants and underwear tore like paper and the cool evening air hit her bare skin, but she couldn't break free of the alien's strong grip. Terrified tears escaped the corners of her eyes and the heavy black pressure coming from the Tethuidian was so strong, she was nearly choking on it. The Tethuidian inhaled deeply from a tube near the mouth that she hadn't noticed and it hummed in contentment._

" _I've never seen a human with such an unusual hair color before; what a rarity. I'll admit you're a little small compared to most of my meals, but your body still smells mature at least, so that's good. Child eggs don't taste nearly as good as adult eggs."_

 _The toothed beak opened wide and started to approach her groin to feast on her reproductive organs. Dizzy with fear, Shiho screwed her eyes shut and apologized over and over again to Akemi for not listening to her, thinking of anything and everything but the gaping maw drawing closer to her flesh._

 _A gunshot went off, the Tethuidian shrieked, and Shiho suddenly found herself free. Her eyes snapped open and she hastily scrambled away from her captor. The she-alien was writhing on the ground with half her tentacles to her mouth when a deep man's voice yelled, "You will not touch her!"_

 _Shiho gasped and whirled around to face her savior. Gin and Vodka were both standing in the doorway with their guns drawn and Gin's was still smoking. His green eyes were wild with uncontained rage and she instinctively recoiled at the malevolent aura of death emanating from him._

" _Going after her was the last mistake you'll ever make," he hissed in pure, visceral hatred and he shot at the Tethuidian again. The bullet ricocheted off the tough outer mantle, and Gin sneered, shoving his gun into his belt. "That won't save you," he said darkly_

 _The Tethuidian made to escape into the next room and Shiho watched in amazement as Gin charged forward, planting himself in the doorway before the alien could escape._

 _The she-alien gave an enraged yell. "I'll tear you apart limb from limb, scum!"_

 _Her tentacles lunged towards Gin and Shiho cried out in alarm. If she got a hold of him, he was done for! The tentacles caught his arms, but he sidestepped the ones that went after his legs and pinned them to the ground with his knees. She watched slack-jawed as Gin successfully moved his arms to the tentacles on the ground, grabbed them, and stood up without any apparent difficulty. She hadn't been able to move at all; what kind of monster was he? Even the Tethuidian seemed stunned by this and Gin's eyes flashed. In the few seconds worth of stillness from the alien, he tucked some of the tentacles under his arm, grabbed onto the ones holding his arms, and spun the alien squid around him in a circular motion until it slammed into the next wall with such force, it broke through the dry wall and caused the whole house to shudder ominously._

 _The Tethuidian's tentacles went slack and Gin stalked forward, drawing his gun and staring coldly down at the alien. He grabbed two of the tentacles roughly and yanked them away, exposing the toothed beak that was opening and closing like the being it was attached to was panting. Gin mercilessly pulled the mouth open and shoved his arm with the gun halfway down its throat. He shot once and the alien flailed, so he shot again and a third time after which the Tethuidian finally stopped twitching. He shot it twice more and only then did he remove his arm from the dead alien's mouth. It was completely covered in thick, slimy orange blood._

" _Eugh, Aniki, that's gross," a voice said from right next to her which caused her to squeak and jump._

 _Vodka was kneeling down next to her and she hadn't even noticed, but he wasn't wearing his black jacket, just his burgundy dress shirt. That was odd; she was sure he was wearing it when he arrived. What happened to it?_

 _Perhaps sensing her eyes on his face, Vodka looked at her and she instinctively shied away. "It's alright, Sherry, don't be scared. She's gone and won't ever come after you again. Aniki made sure of that. You can keep my jacket as long as you need it. I've got plenty more at home."_

 _Shiho stared at him blankly for a few seconds before she realized what he was talking about and looked down to find his jacket laying across her lap and covering her nakedness. She blushed and muttered under her breath, "Thank you."_

" _I told Akemi keeping you in the dark was a bad idea, but did she listen to me? No, and now this happened," Gin said from somewhere far above her._

 _An hour ago, Shiho would have bristled at such a cutting remark about her sister and would have said something just as scathing back at him. But the Shiho of an hour ago had not been attacked and nearly eaten alive, nor had she been rescued by the same man she so strongly disliked for his cold, distant demeanor. She felt oddly disconnected from reality and she didn't know how to react. That terrible black miasma had finally disappeared with the alien and she could breathe normally again. She gazed up at Gin who was watching her carefully from eyes partially-hidden by his long bangs. The rage had gone and they seemed to be back to their normal cold indifference, but… was she just imagining it or was there concern for her still lingering there?_

" _You saved me…" she said blankly._

" _Of course I did," he snorted and lowered himself to his knees in front of her, staring hard into her eyes. "How do you feel right now, Sherry?"_

 _Shiho tilted her head to the side in confusion. "Fine?" she offered._

 _Gin raised an eyebrow and took her wrist in his clean right hand, turning her hand palm up. "Can you feel this?" he asked._

 _She looked down and startled at the sight of her palm skinned raw and oozing both blood and lymph. She turned the other over and it looked exactly the same. "No…?" she said worriedly because her hands should be in a lot of pain right now and she wasn't feeling any of it._

 _Gin sighed heavily and carefully placed her hand back on her lap. "I thought so. You're in shock. Come on, we need to get your injuries treated before they get infected and I think we're close enough to an MiB medical ward that we don't have to take you to a regular hospital."_

Haibara came out of the memory with an uneasy shudder. She hated that she could still recall it in such clear detail, even after all this time. She'd had nightmares for weeks afterward and had gotten desperate enough to try and use a neuralyzer on herself, but Gin caught her and talked her out of it. As terrible as that ordeal was, it had done two good things for her. It had allowed her to start trusting Gin and given her the ability to sense when someone dangerous was after her. But looking back on everything that happened, she realized that the Tethuidian was not the only one she'd felt that murderous pressure from. It had also emanated from Gin when he first appeared and was so deeply enraged to find his friend's little sister under attack. He _definitely_ hadn't been directing any of those vengeful, hate-filled feelings towards _her_.

Was that it? Was that what she was picking up on from Akai and her ability was growing more sensitive to such a small level of pressure that didn't include murderous blood lust or danger necessarily directed to her? She still wasn't sure about the first time, but it would fit with the instance at Ikkaku Rock when Ayumi was briefly taken hostage. So what about the man dressed in black that was following her and Ayumi? It was so quick, it didn't seem possible for the pressure from him to be the result of blood lust, which meant that if her hypothesis was right about the alternate meaning of her evolving ability, the pressure she felt had nothing to do with her at all. Haibara sighed heavily and glanced out the window of the shop to look for him or his companion. She hoped that was the case. She wasn't in a position to be able to fight back if she was wrong and Ayumi was with her. She didn't want her young friend getting caught up in her mess.

When Haibara still didn't see either of the two adults outside, she turned to Ayumi and asked, "Are you ready to go now?"

Ayumi immediately put down the broach she was holding and said, "Yes! I want to try Ai's favorite sandwich!"

"Then let's go," Haibara said smiling and they left the shop to head back to Ayumi's condo. "Did you see anything that you liked in there?"

"I did! There was even a really pretty butterfly hairclip that I wanted to buy, but I didn't have enough money. I'm going to try and bring my mom later and see if she'd be willing to buy it for me. She might say 'no', but it can't hurt to ask, right?"

"I suppose not," Haibara agreed. She didn't remember seeing the clip in question, but she was sure it would look very cute on Ayumi and she half-hoped her mother agreed enough to buy it for her.

She was so caught up in talking with Ayumi that she forgot to keep a lookout for the people in black and only remembered when she saw the man's shadow looming over them from behind. Haibara whirled around to face him and shoved Ayumi protectively behind her, wondering what she could do in this situation when she heard footsteps from behind. She glanced back over her shoulder and gasped. It was the woman from before and they were cornered! She was wrong about her sensing ability then?

"Hello, little princesses," the woman said sweetly.

"This way!" Haibara hissed as she grabbed Ayumi's arm and tried to make a break for it, but a pair of black-slacked legs moved directly into their path and blocked them.

"Can't you give us a bit of your time?" the man said in a smooth tone that put Haibara on edge.

"These two are so cute!" the woman cooed.

"My radar's never wrong, see?" the man said cockily and started reaching into his jacket, presumably towards a chest pocket or even…

'A gun?' she thought frantically. 'No way! In the middle of the street?!'

Before she could react, a loud war cry rang out and a small body tackled headlong into the back of the man's legs, nearly causing him to overbalance. It was Mitsuhiko!

"Both of you, run away!" he yelled at them. Haibara didn't move and stared bewildered at this actual seven-year-old boy taking on a full-grown man to give her and Ayumi a chance to run away.

"What the hell are you doing, brat!" the man snarled and started beating him over the head with a wallet!

"Hurry up!" he screamed, wincing with every blow he took but refusing to let go.

"What the hell are you doing to Mitsuhiko?!" Genta roared and tackled the man to the ground, all three of them ending up in a tangled heap of arms and legs.

"Boys, what…?" Haibara murmured, completely overwhelmed by her two strongest instincts telling her to run away or protect her friends when a sharp whistle abruptly cut through her thoughts.

"Hey, what's going on?!" a man in a blue police uniform shouted as he ran straight towards them.

The presence of the law reestablished order and quelled the rampant chaos. Mitsuhiko and Genta got off the man to allow him to rise and he got back to his feet, brushing dirt off his black dress slacks. The two adults looked nervous at the sight of the police officer, but the boys had surprisingly-defiant expressions on their faces.

"Officer, I didn't do anything. These two boys just attacked me out of nowhere for no reason at all!" the man said angrily.

"Sir, we were trying to prevent our friends from being kidnapped by these two," Mitsuhiko declared with a determined expression on his young freckled face.

"Kidnapped? What the hell are you going on about, brat?" the man said as he rounded on Mitsuhiko.

"Alright, knock it off right now," the officer said and physically inserted himself between the boys and the man in black. "I'm going to have to request all of you come with me to the station and see if we can't get this sorted out."

"Yes Officer," both the boys and man said in unison.

The police officer led the way and Haibara rejoined the boys with Ayumi while the woman in black sidled up to her companion and there seemed to be an invisible wall separating the two groups as they followed the policeman.

"Tsubaraya, Kojima, that was a very stupid and reckless thing for you to do," Haibara scolded the pair of them. "You were lucky that police officer happened to be so close by and stopped the fight before things could escalate into something worse."

Her friends hung their heads in shame and muttered, "Yes, ma'am."

Haibara felt a twinge of pity and guilt at the sight of their remorseful expressions. They were good kids and they'd only done it to save her and Ayumi. They shouldn't have had to act, and that was her fault. She should have been more aware of her surroundings and not gotten herself stuck in that situation in the first place. She was losing her edge, getting too comfortable, and that was worrying.

"However, it was very brave of you both to risk yourselves to come to our aid, so thank you," Haibara said with a slight smile to soften the reprimand.

That seemed to do the trick, for they looked embarrassed at the compliment coming from her but perked right back up. They followed the officer into the police station. There were only four chairs, so Haibara took one and crossed both her arms and legs while Ayumi took the one next to her. The adults took the other two while the boys stood behind them. Once inside, the officer moved to his desk and looked at the two adults.

"Do you two have your IDs on you?" he asked.

"Yes, we do," the woman said as she opened up her purse and handed her ID over to him, her partner doing likewise.

"Chiharu Seino and Youji Kurokawa, yes?" Both nodded in affirmation and he handed them back. "Good. Now, since we already know these two young men seem to think you were going to kidnap their friends, why don't you tell us your version of what happened?"

Kurokawa scoffed as he gave the officer what looked like a business card and Seino followed suit. "We aren't kidnappers, we work for a talent production."

At this, Mitsuhiko suddenly exploded to his feet. "A talent production!" he cried.

"Yeah, we merely wanted to scout her," Kurokaway said.

"Scout her! So you guys aren't with the mafia?!" Mitsuhiko exclaimed.

Good god, Mitsuhiko thought the _mafia_ was after them and he _still_ threw himself at the man? That only made his actions even _more_ reckless.

"Mafia?" the officer repeated and then laughed. "Oh, I see, so you mistook those two as part of the mafia, huh? I guess this clears up that little misunderstanding."

Mitsuhiko hung his head remorsefully. "I'm sorry. It's just… you guys were following them and you said something like 'getting those two at once'," he explained.

"Geez, we were informed that there's an elementary school girl nearby who looks just like the American child star, Grace Aihara. We've been tracking her down since," Kurokawa grumbled in annoyance.

"Grace Aihara!" Mitsuhiko gasped and she could feel his eyes staring nervously down at her.

"What are you looking at me for?" she said perhaps a little snippily to be justified.

"Uh… nothing."

"After a month's work, we finally found you, and just as we thought we'd arrange for a chat today, we saw you and your friend coming out, all dressed-up and with makeup on too. That's when we decided to get you both for our scouting," Kurokawa said.

"So was that what you meant by 'getting those two at once'?" Mitsuhiko asked desperately.

"We certainly didn't mean kidnapping," Kurokawa snapped and Mitsuhiko gave a nervous laugh. "I figured that if I'm dealing with a little girl like her, it'd be best if I had a young woman along rather than just myself. That's why I called her in for back-up," he said with a jerk of his head at the woman next to him.

"That sums up what happened," Seino agreed and turned to her and Ayumi. "Now that we've cleared our misunderstanding, can you listen to what we have to say? I think if you girls were to team up and become a princess unit, you'd sell big."

"Princess unit?" Ayumi exclaimed, her eyes wide with awe.

Haibara couldn't fault her reaction. She was a little girl full of romantic fantasies untainted by the ugly reality of adulthood. It was just fortunate for the both of them that Haibara wasn't actually seven and could recognize a bad situation when she saw it.

"I refuse your offer," Haibara said sharply. "I don't care what went wrong, but I have no intention whatsoever of cooperating with a man who would hit a child's head with a wallet. Same for her."

Ayumi was caught off guard by her inclusion for a moment, but agreed with a firm, "Yes."

Seino looked disappointed and Kurokawa tsked in annoyance. "What a waste of time. Bunch of stinkin' brats. Let's go!" he barked as he marched himself out of the police station.

"Ah, hey, wait for me!" Seino called and hurried after him.

It seemed as if her original assessment of her sensing ability towards Kurokawa was correct. He appeared to be a temperamental guy and she'd probably just picked up on that while he was on the phone.

"Hey, well said, kids!" the officer congratulated. "Just like you said, it'd do you no good to go to a company that's willing to employ such ill-mannered staff. Good thing you refused. And you guys who stood up to them to protect your friends were splendid as well."

Genta and Mitsuhiko both gave pleased, embarrassed laughs which annoyed Haibara. She'd already complimented them both for being brave after scolding them for being reckless, and the officer should be doing the same. They were seven, not seventeen, and didn't have half a chance of defending themselves from a serious threat. She hoped this police officer never had kids.

"But you're too young for makeup, okay little princesses?" the officer scolded gently.

"Yes, sir," Haibara agreed dutifully along with Ayumi, and once they left the station, she turned to Mitsuhiko. "What was going on back there, Tsubaraya? You were behaving very strangely."

Mitsuhiko sheepishly pulled out a rolled-up magazine that he had stuffed into his back pocket and handed it to her. Haibara unrolled it only to gasp in astonishment at a girl that was the spitting image of her seven-year-old self.

"I thought that girl was you," Mitsuhiko admitted.

From there, he launched into his 'crazy' deduction about how she was only pretending to be seven when she was actually older, how she was an MI6 agent and had gone undercover into the American show business to investigate its connection with the mafia and taken 'Grace Aihara' as a stage name, how her cover had been blown so she'd gone into hiding in Japan, and how he'd thought Conan calling him from the plane to warn him not to let her near the house meant that the mafia had found her again and was after her. She was going to kill Kudo for running poor Mitsuhiko ragged like that.

"I see, so that's why you followed us," Haibara said at last after Mitsuhiko had finished. His retelling had taken them all the way back to the street Dr. Agasa's and Kudo's houses were on.

"You're right! She looks just like you, Ai!" Ayumi exclaimed in amazement.

"I know, right? That's why I thought she was indeed Haibara!" Mitsuhiko added, happy to have someone else agree with him.

"But your theory concluding Ai was a spy, was being chased by the mafia, and hid herself in the Professor's house was really clever, Mitsuhiko," Ayumi praised.

Haibara was also impressed by what Mitsuhiko had come up with. If you broke the deduction down to its most basic elements, it wasn't that far from the truth – _either_ of them. "Well, some of it wasn't exactly wrong," she mused under her breath.

"Huh?" Mitsuhiko perked up.

"Oh, don't worry about it," she reassured him gently.

He'd gotten so close to the truth of the matter with nothing more than an old magazine, her ability to put on makeup, hearing a single suspicious sentence from her mouth, and one shady guy following them, and he was only seven. He was _actually_ seven. It was not the first time he'd done it either. Kudo was a Sherlockian through and through, relying primarily on cold facts and logical reasoning with the occasional burst of inspiration to solve cases. In this instance and in the two previous cases _Mitsuhiko_ and not _Conan_ had solved, he'd had very little evidence at all to support his deductive reasoning, just his intuition telling him what to do and where to go to acquire that so-very-necessary proof. Strangely enough, that particular brand of intuitive reasoning reminded her of Gin.

"But if that's the case, then why did Conan tell me not to let Haibara near the Professor's house?" Mitsuhiko asked.

Ah yes, and that mysterious phone call was _exactly_ the reason they were heading to Dr. Agasa's now.

"Come to think of it, when we were near his house earlier, I saw someone going through the gate," Genta commented idly.

Haibara stopped and whirled on him fiercely. "What?"

"It was that Okiya guy who's living next door," he said.

Haibara took her gaze off Genta and stared absently at the ground with a deep frown and anxious thoughts tumbling in her head. Without warning, she took off running down the street to the house, heedless of the kids' shouts of protest from behind her. Akai had gone into the house while both she and the Professor were absent? What was he up to or was it even really him? She had just turned onto the street the house was on when she saw Okiya appear from inside Dr. Agasa's front gate and she put on a burst of speed. She skidded to a halt right before him, panting and glaring up at him and the box he was holding. He didn't react to her presence in any way, either good or bad.

"Hey, what's wrong, Ai?" Ayumi asked, the kids having finally caught up with her.

"Why'd you run away all of a sudden?" Genta added.

"Huh? What's in the cardboard box?" Mitsuhiko said.

That was exactly what she wanted to know. "What are you planning to abscond with from a house that's currently vacant?" Haibara demanded.

"Ah, no, it's a package delivery," Okiya said.

"A package delivery?" she repeated.

"Yes, the Professor asked me to get the package that was scheduled to arrive for him today, so I've been checking the house from time to time," the fair-haired man with that annoying, ever-present stupid smile on his face.

"So that's when Genta saw you!" Ayumi exclaimed.

"But then how come Conan told me not to let Haibara go near the house? If a package delivery was scheduled, couldn't she have gotten it?" Mitsuhiko pointed out.

Haibara gasped, a sudden thought coming to her. He wouldn't…! "Could you let me see the label, please?" she asked Okiya.

He obliged by setting it down on the ground for her. It was a decent-sized box and it had some weight to it judging from how Okiya had set it down, but it was also marked as fragile.

"Don't tell me…!" she said as she grabbed at the edges of the box and started ripping them open. As soon as the folds were clear and she saw the contents inside, she felt a sharp stab of betrayal and muttered darkly, "I knew it."

There were three jars each of peanut butter and blueberry jam carefully packed together in the box and on top of them was a folded piece of paper. She took the paper to read what it said and found herself frowning even further. It was a receipt detailing the contents of the package, and right at the bottom, it read:

 _Thank you for your continued patronage._

 _Points earned from this order: 50P_

 _Total: 650P_

 _You may redeem 650P on your next purchase._

"Your continued patronage?!" Haibara exclaimed in outrage.

If he'd earned 50 points with each order he'd placed, then he'd bought peanut butter and blueberry jam twelve separate times before this without her knowing about it?! He _knew_ how much she loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and she'd given up eating them so that he wouldn't be tempted and _this_ was how he repaid her?! By sneaking around behind her back to buy the peanut butter and jam and then not even sharing!

"Continued? Hey, could it be that the Professor keeps buying these when Ai's not looking?" Ayumi asked innocently.

The fact that an _actual_ child could figure out what he was doing only incensed her further and she growled, "A-ga-saaaaa."

He was going to be in _soo_ much trouble when he got back home from London, and then she was going to raid the house for any other unhealthy food items he might have stashed away somewhere!

She was only vaguely hearing the kids talk about the timing of the package's arrival when she heard Mitsuhiko say, "But the way Conan panicked, it didn't feel like it was anything ordinary."

"You need to use a credit card when using in-flight payphones and the charge is pretty expensive. That's why he was in a hurry," Haibara said dully.

"Oh, I get it." Mitsuhiko said in understanding.

Now that everything had finally been cleared up, Haibara was left staring at the delicious evidence of her housemate's sneaking around. Her anger towards Kudo for causing Mitsuhiko to freak out had been superseded by Dr. Agasa's betrayal, but she still wasn't letting him off the hook.

An evil smirk slowly played its way onto her lips. "Say, here's an idea," she said softly. "Why don't we all enjoy this together?"

"Is that okay?" Genta asked, never one to turn down food, but the face she was making was a little off-putting.

"Of course," Haibara said casually. "After all, the Professor's being so kind as to order these just for _me_!"

"Uh, didn't the Professor…" Mitsuhiko began.

"… want to splurge on these?" Genta finished.

"Ai, you're kinda scary," Ayumi commented.

"Peanut butter and blueberry jam go very well as sandwiches," Okiya said suddenly and effectively interrupted Haibara's vengeful thoughts. "Earlier today, I bought some bread at a bakery in front of the station that's famous for its fresh taste. Shall we make sandwiches with them?"

Haibara gave a start and looked sharply up at the man. She'd felt the pressure near that bakery. Had she sensed it from Akai instead of Kurokawa as she'd first supposed? But even if she had, did it really change anything? It still shouldn't mean he wanted to hurt her. He probably just saw the man in black following her and she felt his instinctive reaction before he undoubtedly noticed something that clued him in that the man in black wasn't a threat to her. Or was she just telling herself that because the alternative was so much worse? That was dangerous. She had no way of proving what her sixth sense was reacting to. She'd already been careless enough about letting someone potentially dangerous get close to her today and it had miraculously turned out alright. The next time something like that happened, she might not be so lucky.

()()()()()

Deep within the central headquarters of the Men in Black based in Tokyo, Gin was working late at night in one of the high-security data centers where some of the most top-secret and sensitive data of the entire Organization was stored. _Very_ few people had access to these rooms, even among the codenamed agents. He was one of them.

He heard the acceptance beep from the door and he quickly shut off the monitor of the computer he was working on just as the vacuum seal was deactivated on the door and it slid open. The light from the hallway beyond backlit the tall, athletic build of a woman with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and wearing a black suit with a knee-length skirt and heels.

"Bit of an odd meeting place for a late-night rendezvous, huh Gin?" she said as she strode boldly into the room, the door automatically sealing shut behind her, and the data center's soft lighting illuminated the silvery strands of her ash-blond hair.

Curaçao was another such person with the necessary clearance.

Gin snorted and stood up from the computer station he was working at. "There's something important I have to discuss with you, Curaçao, but first…"

He stuck his hands in his coat pocket, feeling his Beretta in the left one, and approached Curaçao until he was just out of arm's reach of her. She crossed her arms, no doubt fingering the knives she had hidden up her sleeves. His green eyes stared deeply into her heterochromatic blue ones and she raised an expectant eyebrow, silently waiting for him to finish his assessment.

At last, he spoke, and he asked, "What was the estimated time of our mother's death?"

Curaçao flinched away from him as if he'd physically burned her with the question. She gazed imploringly up at him, silently asking him what was wrong, but he remained stoic and revealed nothing. Not until she answered the question.

Her expression hardened and her eyes took on a haunted appearance as she said hollowly, "Only thirty minutes after elementary school got out."

An unbearable weight he hadn't known he was carrying immediately evaporated into thin air with his younger twin's answer and he removed his hands from his coat pockets to show her he was unarmed. Curaçao was still herself. His little sister hadn't been compromised.

"Thank you for indulging in my paranoia. I had to be sure," Gin told her as he returned to the computer station he'd been working at and turned the monitor back on.

"Does it have anything to do with why you wanted me to meet you down here in the data center so late at night?" she asked as she followed and joined him at the computer station.

"It has _everything_ to do with it," he said gravely and pulled up the files he'd been working on.

"Hm? What's this?" she asked.

"These are files in the MiB chemical database," Gin answered.

"I can see that much, you ass," Curaçao retorted with a roll of her eyes and smacked his shoulder, but then let her hand stay there. "I meant what are they of and what are you doing with them? I recognize the one on Scotch, but the other three are unfamiliar to me. Are they new?"

"Yes… very…" Gin said slowly and then glanced up at her over his shoulder. "Can you memorize them?"

"Sure, I can mem- Oh…" he felt the slightest bit of tension in her body through her hand still resting on his shoulder and she met his even gaze with a worried frown. "You mean _that_ , don't you?"

He nodded once.

From one of the pockets of her skirt, Curaçao pulled out a black case the size of a thin smart phone and fanned it open, revealing a color palette with five transparent slides of different colors: white, blue, green, red, and orange representing the different types of the alcohol she was codenamed for.

"The full palette or just a selection?" she asked and he understood the cryptic question without further clarification.

"The full palette," he confirmed and moved out of the way so that Curaçao could see the data fully without him blocking part of her view.

She leaned forward over the console and her mismatched eyes, her left royal blue and her right a blue so pale it appeared transparent, quickly scanned through the records on the screen, including the match scan reports he'd pulled up for the chemicals in question, and then she held up her color palette, staring intently at all five colors. When Curaçao snapped the color palette shut, Gin knew her abnormally-shaped left thalamus had received the color vision signals from her retina which had automatically triggered the instant transfer of the short-term information in her pre-frontal cortex to the hippocampus in the temporal lobe where long-term memories were held. Curaçao had always been able to pair information with colors from as far back as he could remember. As incredible as her ability to completely bypass the entire process of creating long-term memories simply by looking at a color was, it was very anticlimactic to watch from the sidelines. He remembered when they were kids that nobody in school had believed them at first because surely with a superpower like that, there had to be _some_ sign that her ability had activated, but life wasn't an anime and didn't give you cool special effects like that. Fortunately, the immediate storage of information in her long-term memory meant he didn't have to explain _everything_ to her; he just had to fill in the pieces she didn't already have.

Curaçao pulled back from the computer and looked at Gin in alarm. "Edward, what does this mean? Scotch, Calvados, _and_ Irish all had a similar small, unknown chemical found in their livers post-mortem as some Rainbow Dazzlefly?"

"I'll get to that in a minute, but first, have you ever heard of an alien referred to as Pandora?" he asked.

The left corner of Curaçao's lip twitched downward, the only outward sign that she was perusing through her vast memory to see if she'd ever heard the name before. Gin might have been the best when it came to word games and riddles when they were growing up, but Emma was literally unbeatable when it came to memory-based games. He could never beat her and he wouldn't have been able to even if he _didn't_ have a memory that tended to forget things as soon as he deemed them irrelevant.

Her frown deepened. "A rumor?" she said at last.

"More than a rumor," Gin said darkly as he shoved his hands back in his coat pockets. "Several weeks ago not long after we finally captured Ringore, Sherry was kidnapped briefly by a family unit of Rainbow Dazzleflies that had been robbing convenience stores in order to lure her out of hiding while we were busy, and they had apparently done so on the order of a being they called Pandora. They were confused about Sherry's small body so she used their distraction to escape and hide herself, when Pandora appeared, resembling my own form and mannerisms so completely that not even Sherry could tell the difference were it not for the unusual situation, and killed the entire unit except for the one hiding with Sherry. The dazzleflies had referred to Pandora as female and Sherry overheard her say 'The one I used on Irish wasn't strong enough, but this one ended up being too strong, and Sherry's still alive to boot', before she departed, unaware that Sherry had been present and listening."

"You think this Pandora character is the one after Sherry!" Curaçao exclaimed suddenly and Gin nodded. It was the best and only lead they had. "And that's why you wanted to verify my identity and asked me about the time of our mother's death. We're the only two alive who know that and it's not something an alien shapeshifter would have easily stumbled upon or even taken the time to investigate."

"Exactly, but there's another reason why I needed to verify you and it's because of those chemical reports I had you memorize," Gin said with a jerk of his head to the computer screen. "Sherry knew the dazzleflies were behaving strangely and suspected Pandora had done something to them to override their hive-centric instincts, so she performed an investigative necropsy on one of the corpses she'd brought back home with her. She was searching for literally anything out of the ordinary, which is how she discovered the strange clear blue liquid she found in the liver. The analysis software didn't recognize the chemical, so she ran a match scan with the chemical database and she discovered a 72% match similarity with the drug that was found in Scotch's system during his autopsy."

"And the other two files?" Curaçao asked. "Both Calvados and Irish died before the dazzlefly, but their submission dates are _after_ it."

"I had that done at Sherry's request," he answered. "We both agreed that Pandora must have also been behind the formulation of the drug found in Scotch, and if he was behaving strangely because of the effects, it would go a long way to answering the questions we have about what happened back then. Based on Pandora's words about Irish, we expected to find the drug in _his_ liver, but we weren't sure about Calvados. Given the circumstances of _his_ death though, we decided it was worth revisiting, and as you can see, we obtained positive results."

Thankfully, there had been liver samples preserved from both men and just as Sherry had predicted, the chemical had been found in both, with the one in Calvados showing an 85% similarity to the one found in the Rainbow Dazzlefly, and the one in Irish showing a 94% similarity. The increasing similarity to the most recent known variation suggested that the primary difference in percentages was due to the modification – and presumed improvement – of the drug over time. Gin suspected that the only reason the chemical had not been found in Calvados or Irish during their initial autopsy was because the exact cause of death was known and nothing _too_ unusual had jumped out at the MiB staff to warrant a full in-depth investigation of their bodies the way that Scotch's situation had.

"Three codenamed agents in two years," Curaçao murmured with a worried shake of her head. "That _is_ troubling."

"This is why I sent Bourbon to the Beika City area near Sherry to investigate. I didn't tell him the truth of what happened to Sherry or Kudo or any of my suspicions regarding a dangerous alien infiltrator that's causing codenamed MiB agents to behave strangely and get killed, but if Pandora is really the one after Sherry, then he'll have the best chance of finding information on her movements there. I can't stand him personally, but I can't deny he's good at his work, and I trust him a hell of a lot more than Vermouth these days."

"So where are you currently in your investigation?" she asked.

"Right now? Filling you in on the secret, my suspicions, and having you memorize these files so I can permanently delete the ones on Calvados, Irish, and the dazzlefly from the chemical database at the source," Gin said as he moved back to the computer and started typing once more.

"What?! Gin, why-?!"

"-You've already recorded a perfect copy of the records in your brain, so the information's not lost, but if Pandora has been able to get so close to _codenamed_ MiB agents, then she may also be able to obtain access to the MiB network and I don't want her warned that we're aware something is amiss," Gin interrupted sharply. "Scotch's file can stay because it would be _more_ suspicious to delete it at this point, and at least if any other agents die for suspicious reasons, we'll still have a chemical in the system to compare it to if we find something in the liver."

One last warning box with a blank white entry square and a black lock next to it popped up demanding for an Authorized Personnel ID number and Gin typed in his own twenty-character ID number before pressing 'Enter'. The computer accepted his authorization and just like that, only the record of the chemical found in Scotch's autopsy still existed. Having done what he came to the data center to do, he began the process of shutting down the work station and turned off the monitor once more.

He turned to face his twin once more, the data center's faint blue lights reflecting off their matching hair colors and casting them in a silver sheen. Despite everything that had happened to him and all of the changes he had endured, Curaçao's presence by his side had remained the one constant throughout his life. It was only fitting that she should continue to stand alongside him as he tackled this viper in the tall grass that threatened to destroy the very Organization that had found them living on the streets of Nagano and saved them… the same Organization that he gladly devoted his life to and called home.

"I hope you will do everything in your power to secretly and subtly investigate what you can of Pandora and the Organization's members," he said, phrasing it as a statement but meaning it as a question.

Curaçao gave him a half-smile. "You know I will."

Gin nodded gratefully. "Your position as Rum's right-hand agent offers you an ideal vantage point from which to start. I only have one favor to ask of you that I hope you will abide by."

She raised a questioning eyebrow. "Go on."

"Don't tell Rum," he said.

She glared coldly at him then and he glared right back, knowing what she was thinking.

"It has nothing to do with my feelings towards your relationship with him," he growled in annoyance. " _I_ haven't even told Vodka or 'that person' about my suspicions and I wouldn't tell Sherry either except that she's the reason I have them. We don't know who's already been compromised and who's at risk. It seems that Pandora can take on the appearance of anyone she chooses and gender is no barrier to her, which means she can appear as literally anyone we meet. Please, Emma, you know it's better if fewer people are in-the-know about what we're up to."

Whether it was the logic of his argument that swayed her or his plea to her as his sister instead of Rum's confidante, Gin wasn't sure, but she finally nodded in agreement.

"Heh, a secret just between the two of us. Just like old times, huh Edward?" she said with a fond smile on her face and Gin found himself smiling back because before she had been Rum's confidant, she had been his, and he hers as they had grown up as each other's best friend, rival, partner-in-crime, and shoulder to cry on.

"But wait, what about the scientists you had extract the drug from the livers of Calvados and Irish and submit for analysis?" Curaçao asked suddenly. "What did you do with them? Did you neuralyze them?"

"No, not yet," he sighed as he started walking towards the sealed door and Curaçao followed after him. "I only gave the assignment to Madeira, the Head of Disease Investigations, and her assistant, Singani, since he has a good head on his shoulders and Madeira can't do it alone. They still don't know what the chemical actually is, so that's what they're working on during their spare time."

While alcohol codenames were very commonplace among the field agents of the General Oversight and Intelligence divisions, very few of the members who worked in the science divisions had alcohol codenames. They were generally reserved for those with a high rank and had been with the Men in Black for a long time. Madeira and Singani qualified as such, but the scientists could also obtain codenames if they were the heads of projects working on developing ground-breaking new technology for the Organization. That was how Sherry had gotten hers the day after she had arrived in Japan from America.

"You'll neuralyze them after they've completed their analysis then?"

"No, I think I'll try that new memory-erasing drug Generic has been working on instead and see how well it works for myself."

Curaçao frowned in confusion. "Generic? Who's that?"

Gin scowled. "Honda Toyama."

Her eyes lit up in recognition as soon as the name passed his lips. "Ohhh, little Honda! That orphan that was picked up by the Organization when he was thirteen only a year after Sherry had returned to Japan! Why do you call him 'Generic'? He doesn't have a codename."

"Because in spite of his incredible intelligence, he's the most generic person I've ever met and I see no reason to call him by his name," Gin bit out.

"Wait, wait, _now_ I remember…" Curaçao said knowingly and Gin didn't need to look at her face to know she was smirking. "Honda was working with Sherry because of their comparable intelligences and their closeness in age until you had him transferred to work in another science division on a different project because you were jealous."

Curaçao had not known he was interested in Sherry in that way at the time and was only commenting on him being jealous with the benefit of hindsight. Still...

" _No_ , he was transferred because he was a clingy, needy little shit that wouldn't leave Sherry alone and she couldn't get her work done. My own feelings towards that wuss had nothing to do with it," he corrected irately.

"So you _were_ jealous," Curaçao retorted with a teasing smirk as she placed her hand on the scanner and the door unsealed itself to let them exit the data center

Gin just glared at her and stalked away while she giggled at his retreating back.

* * *

 _Got quite a few notes to write down here!_ _You know, I was never sure if I was going to end up writing the scene where Sherry was attacked by the alien that later caused her sixth sense to develop, but since it's playing such a large focus in Haibara's mind right now, it made sense for me to write it. The way that I wrote Sherry fall when the tentacles grabbed her was something I wrote from experience except that I was pulled forward by a dog and then my toe caught on the edge of the cement and I fell forward just as painfully and breathlessly as Sherry did. Also, the palms of my hands got scraped up just as badly, but I wasn't in shock and it hurt like the dickens! I couldn't even close my fingers without making it hurt!_

 _I actually got the species name for the Tethuidian from the name for the taxonomic Order that squids belong to: Tethuidia._

 _Wow, I'm making a reference to actual characters from the Men in Black movies. I've never seen the third one and don't really plan on it, but based on what I can tell from the timelines of the movies, Shiho would have been sent to America after Agent K had come back to work with Agent J after his brief retirement from the Men in Black, which is good because Jay would not have been able to handle Shiho, and being essentially raised by Kay would be an excellent way to explain how her personality still ended up so stoic and cool in this universe if she wasn't raised by a crime syndicate._

 _Lookie! I found a way to explain Curaçao's awesome memorization ability in a way that makes sense based on what we know of her ability and some guesswork looking at the brain scans in "Darkest Nightmare."_

 _And then there's Generic, a 17-year-old boy of the Black Organization that was featured exclusively in the Special Manga of the Detective Conan and was not written by Aoyama-sama. He probably won't be mentioned again, but I just wanted to include him for a bit. Despite my searching, I could not find any kind of alcohol called generic, so I decided that in this version, 'Generic' isn't a codename, it's just an insulting nickname that Gin calls him._

 _Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Stay warm and safe this holiday season and I'll see you all in the new year!_


	16. Detectives' Nocturne

**Author's Note: Hi everyone! First chapter of the new year and I'm going to try to accomplish my highly-ambitious goal and complete this unasked-for, novel-length fanfic before the end of the year. Not sure how well I'll succeed at that goal, but that's what I'm shooting for!**

* * *

Detectives' Nocturne

" _Hey, Gin!"_

 _The blonde perked up at the sound of his friend's voice as he finished locking up the black Honda Accord the MiB had given him when he'd been granted his codename two years ago. It was no Porsche 356A, but his salary was finally high enough that he'd be able to buy one soon, maybe even in time for his twenty-first birthday at the end of the summer._

" _Akemi!" he exclaimed with a smile and started walking out of the company parking garage to greet her._

 _When she was within range, Akemi put on a short burst of speed and threw herself at him, her arms wrapping around him in a tight hug. Gin generally wasn't a huggy person, especially since his training warned that the restriction inhibited an agent's movements, allowed someone to be close enough to disarm you, or even gave them the chance to attack you before you could react and block, but he allowed it with her. There was just no saying 'no' to Akemi._

" _It's been forever since I last saw you!" she said happily._

" _Yesterday," Gin corrected. "But I don't usually see you here at this time of day anymore since you started university. Have you finally decided classes are too boring and are playing hooky now?" he asked with a teasing smile._

 _Akemi immediately released him and looked affronted at the very notion. "I would_ _ **never**_ _do that!"_

 _Gin clicked his tongue in disappointment. "Darn. And I thought you were finally starting to see reason."_

 _Akemi mock-glared up at him which proved very ineffective since she was still smiling. "Rude jerk, but no, the last of the exams for the semester ended last week, so I'm on summer break until classes resume." The glare disappeared from her face and her blue eyes brightened. "I even got permission from Pisco and 'that person' to take a week-long vacation down to Kyoto and I was hoping that you'd join me since it's been so long since we've done anything together. You can even bring your new partner, Vodka, if you'd like; it'll be fun with more people and it would be a good way for you two to start bonding."_

" _Akemi, Vodka's been assigned to me as my secretary, not my friend," Gin reminded her._

" _So you can't be friends with your subordinates?" Akemi retorted evenly._

" _Well, no, but-"_

" _-Then bring him! He was only promoted to codenamed status, what, a month ago?" she said, looking to him for the answer._

" _Two."_

 _Akemi threw hear arms up into the air._ " _Two months ago, then, and he's a very shy, self-conscious guy while you're this tall, walking wall of intimidating badassery, and he's scared of you!"_

 _This surprised him. "But I haven't done anything. Have you talked to him? Did he tell you that?"_

 _Akemi's eyelids lowered and her eyebrows rose dramatically until she was giving him her best unimpressed stare. "Yes, I've talked to him, but no, he didn't tell me; I just know because I know_ _ **you**_ _. You hate showing weakness, you have a face like a demon, and you dress like a mobster. Trust me, he's scared of you."_

" _Huh," he hummed thoughtfully._

 _That certainly put things into perspective. He knew that Vodka was uncomfortable around him, but he'd thought it was because he was still adjusting to his new responsibilities of being both a codenamed agent and a secretary. He didn't realize Vodka was genuinely_ _ **afraid**_ _of him._

" _Exactly!" Akemi said emphatically as if she'd heard his internal musings. "So you have to bring him along at least so that he no longer thinks you're going to swallow his soul if you so much as_ _ **look**_ _at him with your evil green eyes."_

" _My evil green eyes?" he repeated with an amused chuckle._

" _Well, in Japan, Kappa and other dangerous water-based spirits are said to have green eyes and folklore all over the world believes that people with green eyes have mystical abilities._ _ **We**_ _also know that aliens are real and possess all kinds of fantastic powers we consider magic, so why_ _ **wouldn't**_ _you be able to steal his soul with your eyes?" she said, grinning smugly up at him._

" _Fair point," he conceded as he finally resumed his walk towards the main building. "As wonderful as a week-long vacation sounds though, I'm afraid I can't come with you. I've got too much going on right now to indulge in such frivolities."_

" _Frivolities!" Akemi repeated, and this time, she sounded genuinely hurt, making him wince. "Since when is taking a break from work to spend time with a close friend considered frivolous?!"_

" _I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that," he apologized._

" _Then how_ _ **did**_ _you mean it?" she demanded._

 _He didn't have an answer to that, so he switched tracks. "This just isn't a good time for me to take off work and I'm going to be late for a meeting with someone if I don't leave now, so I'm sorry, but I have to go. I promise we'll catch up later," he said as he tried to shake her off. Right as he turned to bolt though, she grabbed a hold of his right wrist with both hands and held him back. "Akemi, let go!" he hissed, looking anxiously at his watch on his left wrist. He was going to be late!_

" _Who are you going to see that's so important you're trying to run away from me?" Akemi asked in an unusually calm, cool voice that did not suit her cheerful personality._

"' _That person'," he blurted out desperately as he tried to free his wrist from her grasp without actually hurting her, which was proving difficult because her fingers kept twisting around like eels._

" _No, you're not. 'That person' is always amendable to adjusting meeting times to accommodate his agents, even if it means the meeting has to be rescheduled to a different day because the rest of it is booked solid," Akemi retorted evenly. "And he likes that you and I are friends, so he wouldn't deny you the vacation time, even if he_ _ **has**_ _assigned you a lot of work."_

" _Miyano, this isn't the time!" he snarled angrily and finally just ripped his arm out of Akemi's hold. Her fingernails scratched his skin, but he didn't care and took off at a run towards the doors to Headquarters. If he ran all the way, then he might still-_

" _-You're going to Vermouth again, aren't you?!" Akemi shouted furiously, and_ _ **that**_ _name from_ _ **her**_ _mouth stopped him dead in his tracks. She gasped, "You_ _ **are**_ _! And after everything I told you, you're_ _ **still**_ _seeing her?!"_

 _Gin turned and frowned at her. "Who I see and_ _ **don't**_ _see is none of your business," he said coolly._

 _But Akemi would not be deterred. She matched his frown with one of hers and stomped forward right into his personal space. "It is when my best friend is making what I see as the most dangerous mistake of his life," she snapped. "Ever since you started sleeping with her, I hardly ever see you, and it's not just because I started attending classes at the university recently. Even when I've tried to make plans, you've always bailed on me because Vermouth 'needed you at the last minute'. For Heavens' sakes, Edward! Open your eyes and use that smart brain of yours! She doesn't love you, she's just manipulating you and co-opting your free time so that you're not alone with your thoughts long enough to realize what she's doing!"_

 _Gin felt his hackles raise and his ire deepen at Akemi's accusation. "I know she doesn't love me, and I don't love her either. She's not manipulating me; I'm just choosing to spend my time with her. We're only using each other for sex, and love is not required for either of us to enjoy it."_

 _Akemi's cheeks flushed red at his openness even as a harsh laugh escaped her. "Did Vermouth tell you that too?" she mocked._

 _He felt as if he'd been slapped._

 _A grim, but victorious smirk spread across her lips. "I don't agree with most of what that American woman says about making love and its role in relationships, but you're lying to yourself if you think you're not smitten with the woman and getting addicted to her."_

" _I'm_ _ **not**_ _addicted-!" Gin began heatedly, but stopped midsentence when Akemi held up a single finger in front of his face._

" _One week," she said firmly. "You come with me to Kyoto for one week and don't engage in any contact with Vermouth either by text, email, or phone call the entire time you're there. If at the end of that week, you still want to be involved with Vermouth, then I won't say another word against it and you can…" Her face turned an even darker red and she took a deep breath before saying shakily, "… fuck each other to your hearts' content."_

" _Akemi…!" Gin exclaimed, his jaw dropping at sweet, innocent Akemi's use of vulgar language. That more than anything else told him how serious she was about this and he closed his mouth with a slight frown. "And if I end up deciding I don't want to be in a relationship with Vermouth any longer? What do you get out of it?"_

 _Akemi shook her head. "This isn't a bet, Gin. I'm not doing this because I want to win something from you. I'm doing this because I care about you and you just can't seem to see how… how_ _ **toxic**_ _she is."_

 _Gin stuck his hands into his coat pockets and looked at her,_ _ **really**_ _looked at her for the first time in months. She was speaking to him in his language, the language of strength, conviction, and risk, and she was speaking from the heart. She was genuinely concerned for his well-being and that was the sole reason she was intervening. She didn't care that he was sleeping with someone, only that he might get hurt from it, and that was why he nodded in acquiescence._

" _Okay, I'll come with you to Kyoto and won't communicate with Vermouth at all while I'm with you," he said, and it pleased him to see Akemi's determined stare crumble away into an expression of immense relief. "Since I was on my way to Vermouth's anyway, I can go and tell her right now that I will be unavailable for the next week."_

 _At this, Akemi's blue eyes took on a steely look and she hooked her arm tightly around his. "I'll come with you and_ _ **I'll**_ _tell her," she insisted stubbornly. "You're too wrapped around that woman's finger to stand firm and she'll either convince you not to come at all or wrangle some promise out of you that you'll at least call her once in the evenings every day."_

" _Akemi…" he groaned, but she refused to budge and started walking back into headquarters while pulling on his arm._

 _He stumbled forward until he'd caught up with her and then easily kept pace with her shorter stride. Gin felt she was being ridiculous because he_ _ **wasn't**_ _being manipulated by Vermouth, but there was no point arguing with Akemi over it and hopefully having a direct confrontation with this woman she disliked so much would make her feel better._

" _Where were you going to have your tryst this time?" Akemi asked shortly._

 _Something about hearing his best friend say such words in that tone made him feel unclean and his cheeks pinkened slightly. "Her office," he muttered under his breath._

 _He could feel the sharp look of disgust she gave him, but she started walking in that direction without voicing her thoughts aloud. When at last they were in front of Vermouth's office, her name written in both English and Japanese on the door's white plaque, Akemi knocked on the dark wood._

" _Come in," a sultry female voice called from within and Gin felt a shiver crawl uncomfortably down his spine. It was subtle, but he could hear the undertone of her displeasure._

 _Akemi probably heard it too and completely ignored it as she burst through the office door with him in tow and Vermouth looked shocked for all of two seconds before her perfect mask slipped back on over her face._

" _Akemi, this is an unexpected surprise. I was under the impression you detested my very existence and would never dare to set foot in my domain," she said archly._

 _Gin watched her turquoise blue eyes travel from Akemi's set expression to their linked arms, and their expression seemed to harden into ice._

" _And I see you've brought Gin along with you. He and I actually have an appointment that was supposed to start ten minutes ago, but you already know that, don't you? Have you come to warn me away from your precious_ _ **friend**_ _?" Vermouth asked, her voice positively dripping with unspoken accusations._

 _Akemi's frown deepened and she tightened her grip on his arm. "No, I have come to do nothing of the sort. He's almost twenty-one and who Gin sleeps with is his business. I only came along to tell you that Gin has to cancel his meeting with you for today and he'll be unavailable for the whole of next week because he'll be with me on vacation in Kyoto. Pisco and 'that person' are already aware of my plans and I'm sure that they'll both agree to let Gin take the time off since he's such a devoted employee. Is that going to be a problem?"_

 _Vermouth's eyes remained unchanging as she stared down Akemi and the corner of her lips tweaked upward into the slightest of sinister smiles. "I can see you've already made your decision, and if Pisco and the Boss have already given their approval, then who am_ _ **I**_ _to disagree with them?"_

 _Akemi's frown turned into a grim smile. "Thank you very much for your cooperation," she said politely and dragged Gin by the arm again._

 _He tried to throw an apologetic grimace to Vermouth over his shoulder, but Akemi was moving too quickly for that and if he didn't keep his focus on his feet, he was going to end up tripping and then she'd_ _ **literally**_ _be dragging him out._

"Aniki?"

Gin wearily raised his head up from his desk and blinked sleepily at Vodka. "Hm?"

"I finished all the paperwork I had to do for the next two weeks. You just have to sign everything in here," Vodka said as he held up a _huge_ manila folder that made Gin cringe.

"Fine," Gin grumbled as he accepted the folder from his partner and started signing on every paper where he saw a blank line.

He had no idea what exactly he was signing off on which would have been dangerous and irresponsible of him if he did not have complete and total trust in Vodka. In the beginning of their partnership when they _didn't_ know each other that well, he'd _had_ to go through and make sure all of the paperwork was filled out correctly and that he wasn't signing something he shouldn't. They'd been working together for seven years now, and Vodka's excellent memory gave him an edge at remembering what all the different files and forms were for, as well as identifying which ones needed Gin's personal signature.

Their efficient teamwork meant the paperwork got dealt with very quickly, but Gin's hatred of being cooped up in the office more than he had to meant he only came in with Vodka to deal with the paperwork that needed his personal attention once every two weeks to a month. Since Vodka had to first sort through everything before Gin saw it, that usually equated to an hour- or two-hour-long power nap while he waited to write his hand off into oblivion.

Gin wasn't that surprised he'd been dreaming about Akemi. He'd been having a lot of dreams featuring old memories of her since she'd passed away. The one he'd had the most frequently was centered around the moment he'd discovered the text on her phone that she'd sent to Akai asking him if he would be her real boyfriend after she left the Organization and to protect Shiho. _That_ was the event that had led to his discovering his best friend had been killed and impersonated, and it had haunted his thoughts morning and night at every turn that he hadn't uncovered the deception sooner.

That particular memory of her confronting Vermouth though, that was a bit of an odd subject choice for him to recall, even knowing he had no control over what he dreamed about. After Akemi had dragged him out of Vermouth's office, he had gone down to Kyoto with her and Vodka for a week, just as he'd promised he would. He'd enjoyed himself immensely, the mountainous landscapes reminding him of his own childhood growing up in Togakushi in the Nagano prefecture and it was a big part of why he would decide to invite Sherry to Kyoto with him three years later. It turned out Akemi had been right about Vodka; inviting him along and letting him see that he was just as human as everyone else had done wonders in building their trust in each other.

She had also been right about Vermouth. Being away from her for a full week had given him time to think critically about their relationship, what he wanted, and what he was getting out of it, and he was chagrined to realize he was the one losing out. She gave amazing sex, but that wasn't all he wanted in a relationship, and he'd started foolishly believing there was more to what he had with Vermouth than what she was actually putting out. He had also seen he had not started believing that on his own, but that she had been manipulating him into thinking that way, stealing his time away from his friend and his sister, and doing everything in her power to keep his attention focused on her. The week he'd taken to clear his head had smashed that naïve fantasy to pieces and when he'd returned to Headquarters in Tokyo, he'd ended the relationship immediately, leaving her in no doubt as to where he stood with her. Vermouth had been furious with him, but he'd refused to budge and that had been the end of that.

He may have cut his sexual ties with her – which had been a very important and necessary act – but the relationship itself had not left him undamaged. He had grown used to having sex on a regular basis, but without a willing partner and only able to do so much on his own, he'd taken up smoking as a means of taking the edge off and it had worked pretty well, but then he'd just ended up addicted to the nicotine. The other thing that Vermouth had damaged was his expression of emotions. As Akemi had pointed out, he'd _never_ liked showing weakness, but Vermouth had taken a sadistic pleasure in using his emotional reactions to things she said or did to either mock him or humiliate him to the point where he'd learned to force himself to not let _any_ emotion except anger show because she could read even the slightest of reactions and then dig the knife in deeper.

He remembered several months ago that Sherry had described him as a formidable, stoic, walking ice sculpture when she had first met him, and she wasn't wrong; that had been Vermouth's handiwork. He'd only started recently healing from the damage she'd wrought, and he owed most of that to Sherry, herself. Gin owed _both_ of the Miyano girls for the roles they'd played: Akemi for enabling him to free himself from Vermouth's influence and Shiho for helping him start to recover from it.

()()()()()

"What?! You're saying Conan was kidnapped by a murderer?!" Dr. Agasa suddenly exclaimed while on the phone with Ran.

Haibara gave a start of alarm. Conan was kidnapped?! How and why? She silently approached the Professor to try and listen in to the conversation.

It was faint, but she could just make out the tail end of what Ran was saying. " _… to track Conan's Detective Badge with the tracking glasses!"_

"Got it. I can track it with the spare glasses, but-"

" _-Ah, sorry, I have another call coming in! It might be from Conan! If you find out where he is, give me a call!"_ Ran interrupted.

"Wait, Ran!" Dr. Agasa protested, but Ran had already hung up. "Did you hear any of that Ai?"

Haibara nodded. "I did. Kudo's been kidnapped and Ran wants us to find him with the tracking glasses, but how are we supposed to chase after him? Isn't your Beetle in for repairs right now?"

The Professor gave a start of remembrance. "Y-Yeah, that's true," he agreed. "In that case, our only chance is to get a taxi to go after him."

"Then would you like to go after him in my car?"

Haibara jumped at the sound of the familiar, soft-spoken voice and hid behind Dr. Agasa as she watched Subaru Okiya walk into the house carrying a pot of stew. "I apologize; I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but as I came over to share some of my cream stew with you, I heard you having a disturbing conversation at the door, so I came in. If we're going after Conan, we should hurry."

No! There was going to be no 'we' in this! She was adamant on that! "Then just lend us your car keys and the Professor and I can go after him," she demanded.

"I don't mind lending them to you, but my car has a few quirks, so I have to be the one driving it," Okiya said, and it frustrated Haibara that he could very well be telling the truth or he could be lying just so that he wouldn't be left behind.

"Then what if Subaru and I go?" Dr. Agasa suggested to her as an alternative, not understanding her fear of him, but respecting it all the same.

Even when she'd had the house's preventative security measures updated, she had not told him about Pandora, nor her fear of Okiya being her or one of her minions.

"Sure, that would work, that is, if the girl intends to stay here by herself and anxiously wait for a report of the boy's safety. If it'd be alright, I suggest that we all go together. But of course, I won't force you," Okiya said in that polite but intense way of his that made his words sound more like a threat than a suggestion.

Haibara trembled from fear and anger both. She was torn between two choices that she hated. Either get in a car with the driver being someone she didn't trust or stay at home alone where she would be most vulnerable. Neither option appealed to her, especially since the first time she'd been attacked by an alien in Japan had been while she was in a vehicle.

Ultimately, her concern for Conan's well-being won out over her own conflicting self-preservation instincts and she snapped, "Fine, I'll come along, just let me go get the tracking glasses."

"I appreciate your cooperation," Okiya called after her as she stalked down to the basement to retrieve the tracking glasses from the drawer in her desk.

After a few seconds of rummaging around for them, her hands brushed against the cool metal frames and she pulled the glasses out. She stuck them on her face and pressed the button on the right side. The glass for the right frame filled up with lines and circles, and on the periphery of the glasses, she could just make out the blinking red dot that signaled Conan's detective badge. He was still in range, but not for long. Haibara hurried up the stairs and burst into the room where Okiya and Dr. Agasa had been talking while they waited for her.

"Ai, what's wrong?" Dr. Agasa said, but she shook her head and looked directly at Okiya.

"Edogawa's almost out of range of the tracking glasses. If we don't leave now, we're going to lose him," she said.

"Then let's make haste," Okiya said.

He set the stew pot down on the counter and spun on his heel to stride back out the way he came. Dr. Agasa and Haibara followed after him, and they had just stepped through the front door when Dr. Agasa stopped and patted his pants pockets, his expression growing alarmed.

"Oh no, the house keys! I think I left them inside," he said and started to go back into the house to get them, but Haibara grabbed his arm.

"There's no time to lock up! Edogawa's in danger and we need to find him before the murderer decides he's more of a nuisance alive than dead!" she shouted frantically.

Akemi. Akemi. _Akemi_.

"But the house…" he said uncertainly.

"If somebody breaks in while we're gone, we'll deal with it afterward! Edogawa needs us _now_!" Haibara insisted and they joined Okiya already waiting for them in his red car.

She wasn't sure if he just liked the color red or if he was being ironic with his name.

"Get in, quickly," he said and both of them piled in, Haibara climbing into the back and Dr. Agasa taking the front passenger seat.

Haibara chanced a quick look at the glasses and the red dot was still visible. "He's somewhere southeast of our current position. If you can start heading that way, I can pull up the roadmaps on my phone and then give you more specific directions."

"Understood," Okiya said.

He pulled out onto the road and Haibara brought up the maps. It took her a moment to orient the tracking map on the glasses with the one on the phone, but she managed, and they had not lost Kudo's dot in the process.

"Head to Oishi Highway and go south," she told him. "That looks like it will give us the best speed and distance coverage in the correct direction."

"Oishi Highway it is, then," Okiya agreed and directed the car along the quickest route towards the highway from their current position.

Haibara checked back and forth from the glasses to the phone multiple times and though they steadily drew nearer, the murderer's movements were erratic. They weren't heading in one straight line like she would have expected of an amateur but was going all over the place like they were trying to lose a tail. That would have suggested a professional, but then that meant the chances of Conan's continued survival were _very_ low and she didn't want to think about that. However, as random as the murderer's actions were, they didn't seem to be trying to leave the city. They even made a stop somewhere.

"Ah, they've started moving again. It appears they're now moving south on Oishi Highway, heading in the direction of Toriya Town," Haibara said.

"It doesn't seem like we'll be able to catch up with them any time soon, huh?" Okiya sighed.

"But where do you think the culprit is heading to? It seems like they're just aimlessly wandering around," Agasa pointed out.

"They might really _be_ wandering around, unable to find the blood-stained spot they're seeking," Okiya said and Haibara stared hard at the back of his head.

He knew something, or at least had figured something out solely based on the pattern of the murderer's movements, and he was incredibly calm. Too calm for Akai if he was operating under the assumption that Conan's life was in jeopardy.

"You think Edogawa's alright then?" she asked him warily.

"I believe the murderer is currently too preoccupied with other matters to be paying much attention to Conan," Okiya said evasively.

It was a tentative 'yes' and that was good enough for Haibara at the moment. She continued to give Okiya directions and updates to the best of her ability, but then all of a sudden, the red dot started moving more purposefully, like it had a destination in mind, and she panicked. Had the murderer given up on their wandering and decided to do away with Conan after all?! She watched the red dot start to slow again, but this time, her heart was pounding rapidly in her chest and her breath was short.

'Please don't stop! Please don't stop!' she silently begged as every particle of her being focused on that red dot that belonged to Conan Edogawa.

When the red dot stopped, so did her heart, and everything went still.

' _Kudo…!'_

The red dot started moving again, but much more slowly and at a perfect perpendicular angle to the previous vector of movement he'd been traveling along.

"He's getting out of the car!" she exclaimed with relief. "He's still alive!"

Before this point, though she had hoped otherwise, she had not been sure that the murderer hadn't killed Conan while they were driving, but now they had proof that was not the case. Conan was still alive, and their efforts being made to rescue him were not in vain.

"Is he running away from the criminal's car?" Dr. Agasa asked worriedly.

Haibara only shook her head in frustration. "I can't tell that, only that he's on foot now, but- hold on…" she cut herself off and examined the red dot's movements closely.

Kudo had gotten out of the car on his own, but then the red dot had stopped instead of taking off in a straight line. It stayed still for a while and then started moving again, but still not like someone running away or being chased.

"I think… he's still alive… and the culprit stopped on their own… and for some reason, Edogawa's staying with them…" she said at last, wondering what in the world was going on and if Kudo had taken leave of his senses.

"He's still with them?!" Dr. Agasa repeated, just as bewildered.

"Interesting…" Okiya said softly. "You will keep up informed of any other unusual actions you observe?"

"Yes, I will," Haibara confirmed, but she wasn't paying any attention to Okiya anymore. Nothing was more important to her than what that red dot did, and she had to be reminded more than once to tell Okiya where to go.

Conan was meandering around on foot as much as the murderer's car had been earlier, and though the murderer had no tracking device on their person, Haibara was sure they were right next to Conan the whole time. The red dot was doing so much stopping and going that she couldn't even _begin_ to figure out what Kudo was up to, so when the red dot suddenly started moving at an exponentially faster rate, Haibara perked up.

"He's moving fast again. I think they got back in the car. We're alright on our current route so far," she said.

"But why did they get out of the car at all?" Dr. Agasa asked, but not like he was expecting anyone to have an answer.

Notably, Okiya said nothing, but Haibara knew better than to think he didn't have a few ideas of his own about what this all meant.

Kudo's red dot did not continue traveling in the same trajectory from before they stopped, but started heading somewhere else with the same sense of directional intent. Once again, Conan's dot slowed and stopped, and he got out of the car, but did not make a break for it. Haibara had no idea what to make of either Kudo's or the murderer's strange behaviors, but this was starting to feel less like a rescue mission, and more like another wild good chase trying to catch up to Kudo while he was running off to go solve a case.

"They're on the move again, and judging by the speed, he's riding in a car again. This time they're heading in the direction of Haido City," Haibara said as she double-checked the map on her phone.

"But why did he get out of the car? Did the culprit take Conan out of the car and take him around somewhere?" Dr. Agasa wondered aloud again.

"No, perhaps the one doing the taking around is _Conan_ ," Okiya suggested.

He thought so too, huh? That only further validated her growing irritation. Kudo was still in danger with a murderer in his immediate proximity, she and Dr. Agasa were worried about him, _Ran_ was worried about him, and he was off playing detective again! _She_ could kill him right now! The red dot made one more stop and Haibara prayed they would remain still long enough for them to reach them because they were finally close enough that they could. Even just seeing the murderer's car would go a long way towards the effort to rescue Kudo.

"Not far now. At the next corner, turn right, and they'll be just ahead," Haibara said, her directions to Okiya coming more frequently now that they were on the narrow neighborhood streets.

"Understood," Okiya said.

"I'd better tell Ran," Dr. Agasa said and he started pulling out his phone to call her.

"It would be best if you didn't yet," Okiya warned. "We don't know what sort of situation Conan is in, and while I doubt it, we can't rule out the possibility that it's too early to celebrate."

"But that's…" Dr. Agasa protested weakly.

"Please hold off on contacting them until we understand the current situation," Okiya pressed urgently.

"Okay," the Professor conceded at last.

Okiya then looked back at her through the rear-view mirror and said, "Also, I'll say this now just to be sure, but even if we find him or else the car that he's in, we shouldn't act recklessly as we must not endanger his life."

"I know that already. I'm not a child," Haibara huffed irritably without thinking.

"Indeed…" Okiya murmured softly.

Haibara cursed herself for her tongue slip, but there was nothing she could do about it now and she refocused her vision on the tracking glasses. Kudo and the murderer seemed to have returned to the car but had not yet resumed driving. Haibara wasn't sure why, but she was _not_ complaining. According to the glasses and the map, they were almost right on top of Kudo and he should be just ahead of them.

A sharp blast of noise suddenly rang out through the quiet neighborhood and made her jump in alarm. A gun?! It had come from the same direction as the blue car just ahead and it also matched with Kudo's position!

"Hey! T-That sounded like a gunshot just now!" Dr. Agasa exclaimed.

"It's that car!" Haibara shouted in alarm. "That car's the one Edogawa's in!"

"Then please inform Mr. Mouri of this," Okiya told the Professor as they watched the blue car move forward and he followed after it.

"Eh? Not the police?" Dr. Agasa asked.

"Mr. Mouri is the only one who can accurately explain the whole situation to the police," Okiya said. "If we tell him the car model, the color, and the plate number, then the police will be able to setup a checkpoint and stop the car."

"B-But what if the hostage is used as a shield to break through the checkpoint?"

"If that happens…" There was a short, fast, vicious pulse of pressure from Okiya that made Haibara suddenly gasp in fright. "… we stop them by force."

It disappeared as soon as it came, but Haibara's breathing was still fast. Logically, she knew that the pressure wasn't being directed at her… that Akai was feeling viciously protective of Conan and his hunting aggression was focused on the culprit… but it was hard to remember that when her instinctive response was to get away from the source of that feeling as fast as possible. She forced herself to calm down and breathe slowly. She was not Akai's target… She'd have felt it much sooner than now and it would have been for much longer if she was.

Dr. Agasa called Mr. Mouri and quickly informed him of the type of car Conan was being transported in when a familiar malevolence shot through her and Haibara stiffened. What…? This feeling! The blood lust of being hunted…! Something… Something was closing in! She was trapped in a car with that same pressure homing in on her location. The thirteen-year-old inside her didn't care that she was in a moving vehicle completely unarmed and even more defenseless now than she was five years ago, there was only one thought in her head: Run, trap. Run, trap. Run, trap!

"Don't make that kind of face."

Haibara startled anew, but not in fear and her head snapped forward. It couldn't be…! Okiya was masking his true voice, but somehow… for a moment in the depths of her terror… she had heard Akai speaking to her, his words matching those echoed by the Akai of her memories.

Memories of an Akai who had first started dating her sister to get close to her in order to secure a place for himself within the Organization…

Memories of an Akai who had seen her worried face as Akemi left to take on a mission that required she act as bait to lure out one of their targets, and reassured her that he would protect Akemi even at the cost of his life…

Memories of an Akai who had become someone she had started to see as an older brother-like figure…

"I won't let them get away," Okiya said, snapping her out of her reverie and just like before, the pressure was gone. "Professor, take the wheel."

"What?! Subaru, what are you doing?!" Dr. Agasa exclaimed as Okiya opened the car door and leaned out of it, and the Professor hastily grabbed the wheel to keep the car straight.

Haibara couldn't see what Okiya was doing, but she didn't miss the white Mazda RX-7 come up on the right side. Okiya pulled himself back in quickly and the car swerved a little as the wheel changed hands from Dr. Agasa back to him.

"Are you alright, Subaru?" Dr. Agasa asked.

"Yes, I'm fine. I got out of the way in time," Okiya said, sounding unusually thoughtful for their current situation.

Haibara looked straight ahead through the front window and gasped. "Look!" she yelled.

The white Mazda spun out ninety degrees and the culprit's blue car smashed headlong into the passenger side. The sound of screeching tires, shearing metal, and shattering glass caused a hair-splitting cacophony of noise that pierced straight through her eardrums. The two crashed vehicles came to an abrupt halt and the blue car's passenger door opened up. A woman stepped out holding Conan hostage with a gun to his head.

Okiya started to slow the car, but a motorcycle shot past them at full speed on the right side and made a flying leap on top of the blue compact car. A sharp hiss escaped Okiya as they watched the motorcyclist spin their bike on one wheel and strike the gun-wielding woman with the other wheel. The maneuver knocked the woman out cold and knocked both Conan and the gun out of her hands. Not two seconds later, the motorcyclist had tackled Conan in a hug, and Ran and Mr. Mouri were coming around to him from the far side of the Mazda. There was also a bleached-blond, tan-skinned man with them that she didn't recognize. Presumably, he was the owner of the white Mazda that had just been totaled.

"It seems he's safe now," Okiya said as he brought the car to a stop just past the scene of the accident.

Haibara did not get out of the car, but she turned off the tracker and removed the glasses as she watched both Ran and Mr. Mouri fuss worriedly over their small charge. Subaru was right… There was no need to worry, especially now. Kudo was safe and she had irrefutable proof that Subaru was Akai. Nobody apart from themselves knew he had ever said those words to her. He could not have said them if he was not the genuine article.

()()()()()

A purple motorcycle pulled up to the house at 22 Beika Block, 2nd street that served as the home residence of Dr. Hiroshi Agasa, a local inventor and neighbor to the Kudo house next door. The rider turned off the engine and removed their helmet. Long, wavy locks of light blond hair cascaded free and red-painted lips smirked up at the house the woman had stopped in front of.

"While the mice are away, the cat will come out to play," Vermouth said in English as she set down her helmet and strode up to the gate.

She tested the door and found it unlocked, causing her smirk to widen. She pushed through it without a care as if she belonged there, and she was similarly unchallenged at the front door.

Vermouth tutted softly in disapproval as she waltzed right in. "You should have made sure to lock up before you left, little Sherry. You never know what unwanted visitors may decide to come a knocking."

Nevermind that she knew in advance that the residents weren't home and wouldn't _be_ home for some time yet. They would have to wait for the police to take the preliminary assessment of the situation and would want to reassure themselves of little Conan's well-being. Vermouth of course could not _fault_ anyone for forsaking basic house safety precautions in favor of enacting a timely rescue of her precious Silver Bullet, but that didn't mean she wouldn't take advantage of the slipup. When Vermouth had tried killing Sherry several months ago, she had not been at all interested in the man whom she was living with. She was aware that he was an alien, and an Arquillian even, and that he had been a friend and neighbor of the Kudo family for Shinichi's whole life, and her interest in him had ended there. Her primary objective at the time had been to bring about Sherry's death and investigating him in-depth would not have assisted her in that endeavor.

She had put off thinking of Sherry for as long as she had at her Cool Guy's request, but it was only a matter of time before she would reconsider disposing of her again. That girl was the one person who could not continue to exist in this world. However, time and distance had given her plenty of opportunities to reflect and now Vermouth wondered if there was perhaps _another_ reason Sherry was sent to live at _this_ particular house that had nothing to do with neighborly proximity. That was what she was here to investigate.

Vermouth quickly took stock of the central living space. She had been here once before while posing as Dr. Araide and nothing had changed since her last visit. Unfortunately, she highly doubted that what she was looking for would be found in such an open space where Shinichi could easily stumble upon it. Vermouth saw several doorways she could take, so she chose the closest one without a door. It was the entrance to a stairwell leading down into the basement, so she descended to the lower level and found herself in some kind of makeshift office and temporary storage space. There was a desk with a computer sitting right across from a long couch and there were some boxes in the far right corner opposite a closet. If Vermouth had to guess, she would believe that Sherry probably used this room as a makeshift lab and frequented it regularly, but Vermouth also suspected that this was not all the room had to offer. MiB agents were notorious for hiding things in plain sight.

Without even a second's hesitation, she strode over to the closet and threw the doors open. Her turquoise blue eyes flicked about the enclosed space and then she dropped down to her knees, feeling along the back wall's baseboard. She slid her fingers from the left corner to the right one and felt a small, round, barely-noticeable protuberance like a button. Vermouth smirked and pressed it.

The sound of machinery came to life from behind the walls, and she watched unsurprised as the back wall slid aside to reveal a miniature MiB-furnished science lab. It was as she'd suspected. The basement room she'd entered was a front for Shinichi's benefit while the _real_ lab work took place in this hidden room. It was a pity that she was only here for information gathering instead of sabotage. Imagining the havoc she could wreak on Sherry's work down here was a wonderful fantasy, and she might have been tempted were she not worried that anything she tampered with would find its way to Shinichi and cause him harm. She despised Sherry with all of her being, but not enough to risk _his_ life over it.

Still, that didn't mean she couldn't _look_ …

Vermouth entered the science lab and the first thing she did was approach the computer set into the wall to search for any secret files hidden on it. She was just going through the motions to make sure nothing was missed, but she would be genuinely shocked if Sherry's hard drive had copies of the good Professor's most top secret private records. Personal names were so sacred to the Arquillians as a species that it was considered the highest honor to know another individual's birth name, and the Men in Black upheld that sanctity to great effect. There was a document that existed hidden and heavily-encrypted behind massive firewalls within the network that listed the original birth names of every single Arquillian living on Earth along with what their respective Earth-given names, and there were only two people in the entire Organization that could access that file: the Boss and his second-in-command.

There was a specific Arquillian she was seeking, whose birth name she knew but not their Earthly identity, so that she could recruit them to assist in the completion of a project that had already been at least a quarter of a century in the making. As expected, Vermouth found nothing of interest on Sherry's computer, so she contented herself with being nosy and poking around the empty lab for a bit, dreaming of all the damage she could cause that stupid little girl. She even opened the small storage freezer and withdrew one of the vials out of curiosity, but her amusement died as soon as she saw the clear blue liquid in the tube. The date on the label was over a week after Ringore's arrest and it also read ' _O. photocoleopterus_ N liver centrifuge 01'. Vermouth frowned. That was unhelpful since the only word she understood was 'liver', but she didn't need to know what the label said to recognize the contents of the vial, because she had administered this chemical, a mind control serum, many times to various members of the Organization.

Vermouth quickly threw the vial back into the freezer before it thawed in her hands and rushed back over to the computer mainframe to open up the MiB chemical database. She had no idea how Sherry had come to obtain a sample of the mind control serum, but she definitely would have tried to analyze it to ascertain its nature which meant there should be a record of it in the system. First, she searched for all chemical samples submitted on or around the date that had been written on the vial, and she found about twenty entries, but none of them were what she was looking for. She pursed her lips and then tried another tactic. She brought up the analysis file on the unidentified chemical found in Scotch's autopsy and conducted a database search using the key markers from the analysis to find reports of chemicals of at least 50% similarity. That search took much longer than the previous one, but it still turned up nothing. The record from Scotch was the only one present and Vermouth narrowed her eyes in suspicion.

Sherry had a labeled and stored _sample_ of the mind control serum and the most recent record of it was still the one from two years ago. Any computer-based analysis of it would have created a new record and been imported into the chemical database. The only reason such a record wouldn't be present anymore was if it had been deleted at one of the MiB's central data storage centers and there was only one person Sherry would have told that had both the necessary rank and security clearance to be able to take such action.

Vermouth's hands clenched into fists as she glared at the screen and muttered darkly, "Gin."

He was the very _last_ person she wanted to have sticking his nose into her business. If _he_ was involved and had indeed been responsible for the deletion of the record from the chemical database, then it meant he was now aware that there were spies in the Organization and he was playing his cards _very_ close to the vest. He may even be conducting his own secret investigation of the Men in Black. She remembered thinking it odd that Gin had ordered Bourbon, one of _her_ subordinates of the Intelligence Division and a man he couldn't personally stand, to be stationed in Beika City and had offered no word of explanation to her or anyone else for his actions. Even the Boss and Rum had been perplexed. She knew; she'd plied her favor with the Boss to see if he could tell her anything about it and he'd had nothing.

That had been around the time Sherry had apparently obtained her sample of the mind control serum, and a worrying thought came to her then. Pandora… Did Gin know about her? Was that the reason he had sent Bourbon of all people to Beika City? It was bad enough that he now suspected the Organization was internally compromised, but if he was aware of Pandora's existence as well, this would only further complicate matters. She would have to be even more careful in how she dealt with him from this point onward.

Vermouth made sure to reset everything back on the computer to the way it was before departing from the lab and pushing the button to slide the secret door shut. She'd gathered some unexpectedly valuable information from snooping about Sherry's lab, but none of what she was trespassing into the house to acquire. She took the stairs back up to the main circular living space and tried one of the closed doors. One of them opened into a broom cupboard and another led into the toilet. The third door she tried looked even more promising than Sherry's lab in the basement.

It was a wide room with a long, flat table piled high with half-completed projects and inventions, scattered tools all over the place, and an entire billboard decorated with drawings and diagrams. It looked like a workshop and it was definitely the Arquillian's private space. If his private records were going to be anywhere in the house, it would probably be in this room. The trouble would be finding it amongst the mess without disturbing it and alerting either the inventor or the shrunken scientist that someone had been inside. Vermouth tread carefully into the workshop and turned on the overhead light by pulling on the long cord hanging from the ceiling. Now see where she was putting her feet at least. Her eyes slowly scanned every square inch of the room, searching for anything out of the ordinary that could indicate a secret compartment was present.

Nothing obvious jumped out at her, so the first thing she did was check the desktop computer just as she had done with Sherry's. That searched turned up even more fruitless; it wasn't even connected to the MiB network. Well, she hadn't _really_ expected it to be there anyway. Computers could be hacked. No, Vermouth had a feeling that the Professor would have kept his personal records as paper copies probably in some old-fashioned, behind-the-portrait-style wall safe. He seemed like that kind of cliché-loving fellow. The only problem was there were no portraits of any kind in the workshop. The closest thing there was to one was the cork billboard covered in diagrams.

Vermouth's eyes narrowed and she hummed thoughtfully. Maybe…? She picked her way through the clutter to the back of the room and examined the billboard closely. The thumbtacks were probably normal because it would be immediately apparent if somebody tried to move one and found it wouldn't budge. Her best bet would be to search along the frame, and the trick mechanism would probably be even more subtle than the closet baseboard switch. Vermouth gently eased her fingers along the bottom part of the frame with her thumb on the outermost edge and the rest on the wide front-facing part, feeling for any particular notches or nicks that might be too even or symmetrical to be accidental. She repeated the action on the two side borders. She was about to do the same to the top border and had just placed her fingers in position at the top left corner of the frame when she felt a small lever like a metal splinter set into the wood between where the left side and top border pieces met.

She flicked the lever downward.

There was a metallic click and the entire board swung outward away from the wall on a hinge on the right side. Vermouth caught the board before it hit her in the face and peered around at the wall behind it, smirking to herself when she saw the steel blue safe hidden there.

"Did I call it, or what?" Vermouth said to herself as she approached the safe and placed her ear against the cool metal.

She started slowly turning the combination lock and listened within the device for the faint click that would signal she'd reached the correct number and needed to turn it in the opposite direction. The mind control serum might be being developed for use against Men in Black agents, but her _own_ tests of the prototypes on non-MiB agents had proven quite useful. Toichi Kuroba had been an excellent teacher to her and Yukiko regarding the art of disguise, but she knew he never would have taught her his more… criminally-inclined talents without a little _persuasion_. It truly was a pity his life had ended so abruptly. She'd liked him and he could have been useful in other ways. The lock reached the second number and she made a note of it before turning it back the other way. She didn't have to go very far before she heard a third _tink_ followed by a loud _thunk_ as the safe unlocked. Vermouth pulled the safe door open and her eyes widened hungrily at the sight of a thick binder stuffed with old, slightly-yellowed papers in protective plastic sheets. She snatched it out of the safe and opened the binder to the very first page. It was a copy of the Professor's application for immigration to Earth… the _full_ copy that only the Boss and Rum had access to, and it had… everything! Even his _true name!_

"Lilinoonilil…!" she breathed and slowly, a sinister, predatory air crept into her expression in the narrowing of her eyes and the curl of her lips. "I've finally found you."

Significant progress had been made to improve the strength of the mind control serum from the original raw material, but its development had recently reached an impasse where the victim either was completely overpowered and became like a mindless zombie unable to take action of their own accord, or it wasn't strong enough and the victim acted out unexpectedly or fought against the effects. The drug needed to be right in that sweet middle-ground of the two effects before further progress could be made on Pandora's plans.

Scientists on Arquillia were as common as sports athletes in the United States and just as heavily-sponsored. An Arquillian working on the serum could easily break through the lack of progress, but not all scientists were on the same level and this was a complex formula. Not just anyone would do. However, just shy of a year ago now, one of Pandora's numerous connections caught a whisper of a rumor that the former Head Scientist for the Arquillian royal family had retired and immigrated to Earth to live out the rest of his golden years, and his name was said to be Lilinoonilil.

That discovery had been simultaneously heartening and frustrating. The mind control serum would be perfected in no time if the royal family's former Head Scientist was put to work on it, but the information was all but useless if Vermouth couldn't _find_ him. The only surefire way she could discover his Earthly identity was to use the mind control serum on either the Boss or Rum to convince them to allow her access, but she _couldn't_ use the serum because it wasn't ready, which was why she needed Lilinoonilil's Earthly identity. It was a Catch 22 she had been unable to get around, so Vermouth had first used the resources she _did_ have to narrow down how many Arquillians had immigrated to Earth and how many of them worked in a science-based profession. She could not imagine an individual who'd spent his whole career as a high-ranking scientist would be able to give up the field completely. Someone must have noticed part of her search trail and alerted the Boss, even if they didn't know she was the culprit, because free access to information on the resident Arquillian Earth population had been on lockdown to members below a certain rank ever since. Fortunately, she exceeded the rank requirement, but it had still severely limited her options for investigation.

No matter. That was all in the past because she knew the truth now. Lilinoonilil's Earth name was Dr. Hiroshi Agasa, and she found it was not the victory she'd hoped it would be once her excitement at the discovery had faded, and a grim frown stole over her face. Why did it have to be _him_? Lilinoonilil could have been _literally_ anyone else and she wouldn't have cared, but he was a dear friend of her Silver Bullet's and she couldn't do anything to the alien scientist without either alerting Sherry that something was amiss or hurting Shinichi. Sherry, she could deal with, but Shinichi… she couldn't go there, not with him.

"I'm trying to help you achieve your goal, Cool Guy, but you're not making this easy on _my_ end," Vermouth sighed in resignation as she carefully placed the binder back in the safe, closed the door, and moved the bulletin board back into place. She made sure everything else in the room was as she left it before exiting.

She'd found Lilinoonilil but was no closer to fixing the drug. She would just have to find someone else who specialized in alien biochemistry. Unbidden, the young brunette scientist that was the pride and joy of the Research Division and the apple of Gin's eye came to mind, and Vermouth scowled darkly as she departed the house and made her way to the motorcycle she'd left parked on the street. Much as it galled her to admit it, the chit probably _could_ finish developing the drug to its final stage, but even if Sherry would have been willing to work on the serum, it would be a 0 Kelvin day in Hell before Vermouth asked _her_ for help.

When the popular and well-known high school detective Shinichi Kudo had suddenly vanished, and agents started looking into it, the official story put out from up top was that Shinichi had unwittingly stumbled upon MiB agents in action, and in attempting to erase his memory of the event in question, Gin had used an experimental memory-erasing drug and accidentally killed him. Vermouth had been in the States when she heard the news and had been beyond devastated. It couldn't be! Her Cool Guy dead?! And not even for chasing down a suspect or protecting his Angel, but for something as… _stupid_ and _inane_ as being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being the victim of a mere _whim!_ Her grief had turned to cold fury and despite being on the other side of the world, she'd tracked down _what_ drug had killed him and _who_ had created it, then was irresponsible enough to let something that _fatal_ be approved for field testing. She'd gotten her answer. The drug was APTX-4869 and its creator was other than _Sherry._ She had immediately made plans while she was in the States for what she would do to that arrogant woman once she returned to Japan, but before she could enact them, Sherry had gone.

It was so sudden and unexpected, not even her labmates knew what had happened to her and unlike with Shinichi Kudo, there was no official story to explain her absence. In the wake of lacking information from an authoritative source, the rumor mill about Headquarters had run rampant. The most popular theory regarding her seeming disappearance into thin air overnight was that Sherry had betrayed the MiB by leaking Organization secrets to outside sources and then gone into hiding to escape criminal prosecution.

Vermouth had not believed the rumor for an instant, and not just because Gin wasn't hunting her down with a vengeance. When she had personally asked the Boss for answers and he refused to discuss the nature of Sherry's fate even with her, Vermouth figured then that Sherry had been _sent_ into hiding as a result of Akemi's murder and she was being kept in the dark because she was considered a threat to the scientist prodigy. She had all but given up on finding Sherry to pay her back for her heartless cruelty when she saw her Cool Guy at the Haido City Hotel deaged into a child and _alive_. Vermouth had wondered if perhaps the same had happened to Sherry and if she would find her near the only other shrunken teenager in existence.

She had always hated Sherry, ever since she sunk her claws into Gin and permanently seduced him away with her youth and innocence, but Gin supposedly killing Shinichi with that woman's untested drug was the last straw. Gin had killed her favorite, so she would kill his, and she would complete her revenge on the entire Miyano family while she was at it. Vermouth smirked to herself in fond reminiscence as the motorcycle's engine roared in her ear and the wind whipped through her hair. It was Pandora's connections that had ultimately been responsible for eliminating Akemi, but _she_ had manipulated the twit to be in a position to be killed, so she took credit for that kill, and then Sherry should have met her end months ago by her hand at the shipping yard.

It didn't even matter to Vermouth that she'd discovered Shinichi wasn't dead; Sherry had to go. Nothing less than her corpse would bring her satisfaction and atone for the insult she'd been dealt by not being told the truth regarding Shinichi's and Sherry's fates, despite her high rank and unique position as the Boss's favorite. Then there was the score she still owed Gin for the humiliation he'd caused by _him_ deciding to break it off with _her_ all those years ago.

Vermouth owed _both_ of the Miyano girls for the roles they'd played: Akemi for cutting Gin free from her influence and Sherry for stealing him away and undoing all the work she'd put into him, as well as hurting her Cool Guy. Well, _Pandora_ had seen to it that Akemi had paid for her interference. _Sherry_ was still owed for _hers_.

* * *

 _All aboard! Next chapter is the Raven Mystery Train! I have so much work to do on that one, I'll be lucky if I get it finished in February._

 _Do you know, I believe this is the first time I've actually written (and posted) Gin and Akemi interacting with each other in this story. I actually have a step-aunt who, during her college years, was in a relationship with some guy that basically wanted her to be a housewife and stay-at-home mom if they got married, so my step-grandparents, who knew their daughter better than that, had her go on a week-long vacation somewhere with no contact of any kind with him (and this was back during the age of snail mail and expensive long-distance calls, so it was easier to disconnect from technology). That was exactly what she needed to set her head on straight and she broke up with the loser after she got back._

 _Also, as a fun little aside, this was definitely a conversation that Gin and Vodka had on the first day they were in Kyoto with Akemi:_

 _Gin (randomly, out of the blue): I don't eat souls.  
Vodka: Huh?  
Gin: I'm not going to eat your soul if I look at you.  
Vodka: ... Good...?  
Gin: Akemi said you were scared of me because I have green eyes and there's a lot of folklore that says green-eyed people can do magical things like that.  
Vodka: Okay...  
Gin: I just wanted to let you know that I can't steal souls. Or eat them. So you don't need to be scared of me.  
Vodka: ... You're not good at talking about yourself, are you?  
Gin: Is it that obvious?  
Vodka: Painfully.  
Gin: I'll work on it.  
Vodka: Thanks... Aniki…_


	17. Raven Mystery Train

**Author's Note: Happy Valentine's Day to everyone and also Happy Birthday to me! So, this chapter isn't really the typical kind of thing people do for Valentine's Day, _but_ when I realized last week that this chapter would probably be done in time for my birthday, I decided "What the heck, might as well wait and treat myself." Totally didn't plan it that way, of course, but that's just how the cards fell this time. This chapter spans the very end of episode 700 and goes all the way through to the end of episode 704.**

 **I have _three_ canon spoiler warnings from the manga!**

 **SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 1008 for the Boss of the Black Organization's true identity! There is no current anime episode equivalent for that chapter yet, but his identity HAS been revealed in the manga, so I'm using it!**

 **SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 1011 for the revelation of Bourbon's connection with the Miyano family!**

 **And SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 1021 for Scotch's real name and a family relation! Let's just say that Scotch just became a hell of a lot more interesting to me now because of who he's related to.**

* * *

Raven Mystery Train

Bourbon knew that when _Gin_ had ordered him to Beika City to investigate Pandora, it would not be an easy task, but he had not appreciated just _how_ difficult it would be until he'd begun the investigation. He had been in the area for weeks and the most he'd managed to glean was that a Pandora definitely _existed_ , but the nature of its existence, form, and objective all continued to remain a mystery. The Pandora seemed to be made of more rumor than fact and was just as insubstantial. Bourbon came across more information about a mythic _stone_ named Pandora that could supposedly grant immortality than he did about the alien of Gin's interest.

He had broken into Detective Mouri's computer on the off-chance that he'd find something that could help his investigation. He was a famous detective that had solved hundreds of cases all across Japan. It was possible, even likely, that Detective Mouri had encountered aliens at some point during his casework. He may have even had some as clients.

He had _not_ expected to find a video file of Sherry nor that the computer would be hacked within seconds of him finding it. He had not even been able to block the hacker, much less identify them.

The identity of the mysterious hacker was why Bourbon was currently sitting at the bar of the Black Widow nursing a glass of scotch whiskey. Seeing Sherry was a shock, and not in the least because she looked just like her late mother, Elena. Sherry had just suddenly disappeared from the Organization with no one the wiser about where she could have gone and no word from the higher-ups about what happened to her. He hadn't really believed the rumors circulating that she'd turned traitor, though that theory had gained a great deal of traction once word had gotten around that Vermouth had tried to kill her. If she _was_ a traitor though, then it probably wouldn't be kept a secret by the ones in charge. No, Bourbon had been of the opinion that she'd been sent into hiding with only a select few people aware of her exact location, and given Gin's interest in this insubstantial Pandora alien, he'd suspected that Pandora was the cause and that Sherry was hiding somewhere in Beika City.

But the video of Sherry was taken in the Gunma mountains, which were not the first, second, or _third_ place he would have considered searching for her, but the computer had been _hacked_ which seemed to confirm his suspicions that yes, someone _was_ after Sherry and it might _still_ be Pandora if they were both of the same mind that the Gunma mountains were an unexpected hiding place for her.

"Ahh, so this is where you've holed up for the night, Bourbon," a familiar woman's voice said as she approached from his right side.

"Vermouth," he said, inclining his head politely towards her in acknowledgment of her presence.

"Scotch whiskey, eh?" she commented airily as she sat down on a barstool next to him. "Been a rough night of investigation already?"

"Just haven't had many leads and then something unexpected cropped up, that's all," Bourbon told his superior as he drank another swallow of the whiskey.

"Bourbon, you know I can't help you if I don't know what it is you're investigating," Vermouth said with a resigned sigh.

Bourbon nodded. "I'm aware, but Gin assigned me this mission, and since you're both the same rank, if _he_ hasn't told you, then I don't believe _I_ have the authority to tell you either."

"Fair enough, but then perhaps I could help out with this 'unexpected thing' interfering with your work, or is that _also_ beyond my scope of authority?"

She said the last part a little bitterly, but Bourbon considered it. Gin was having him investigate Pandora and though he suspected Pandora was involved in Sherry's current situation, he had _no_ evidence to back it up and maybe having Vermouth's insight and contacts would be beneficial. He was a pro, but Vermouth was on a whole different level from him. There was a reason she was the head of the Intelligence Division at the MiB and was considered 'that person's' favorite. She was the absolute best at what she did.

"Actually, you might be able to help. In my investigation, I accidentally stumbled across a recent video file of Sherry that was taken in the Gunma mountains," Bourbon said.

"The Gunma mountains? That's unexpected; she's not supposed to be there," Vermouth said with a raised eyebrow.

So he wasn't the only one who thought so then. "That's what I was thinking, but that's not the strangest part. No sooner had I found the video and noticed she was wearing a Mystery Tree Pass Ring when the computer was hacked, and I believe the person who did so must have seen the video, but the timing is just too convenient. It was as if someone knew I would be in there and that there might be something worth investigating on that computer," Bourbon said with the slightest of frustrated sighs.

"You think there's someone in the area that's watching your every move," Vermouth summarized.

Bourbon nodded. "I already know Akai's little sister has been hanging around the Mouri Detective Agency with frequent regularity and given Stout's report on Mary's fairly recent disappearance, such a deduction is not out of the question. Masumi herself might even be the culprit if she's not really Masumi."

"Do you have a copy of the video?" Vermouth asked.

"Naturally. It's already on my phone," Bourbon said as he pulled up the file and handed his phone to Vermouth. "Don't know what further insight you can gain from it, but knock yourself out."

Vermouth played the video clip and watched it with a thoughtful frown on her face. "Has the Boss seen this yet?"

"No, I didn't think it was necessary," he said.

"Send it to him. He'll want to know where Sherry is right now."

"I suppose you're right," Bourbon said as he took his phone back and started composing the message to 'that person'. "So what are your thoughts regarding the hacker?"

"That depends. Do you think they know who you _really_ work for?" she retorted and then ordered a martini from the bartender.

That was a heavily-loaded question and she could have been referring to either the Public Security Bureau, the Black Organization, or the Men in Black.

"I think they know of only one and I don't think it's because of my suit, and while my sakura-shaped silver medal makes the suit look nicer, it's hardly shiny enough to draw the eyes," he said carefully.

"A man with secrets always looks good dressed in black, Bourbon. Women are just as attracted to the allure of mystery as men," Vermouth said as she took a sip of her martini.

She had understood his underlying meaning perfectly. The suit represented the MiB, the sakura-shaped silver medal represented the PSB, and the color black represented the Black Organization. He didn't think the hacker knew he was MiB or PSB.

"But if the hacker _does_ like the cut of your suit, black or not, then perhaps they've been keeping an eye on you just in case you discovered anything about where Sherry has hidden herself away so that they can find her instead," Vermouth suggested casually.

Bourbon considered the possibility. It would certainly explain why the video had been hacked so quickly… And judging from Vermouth's words, it seemed his deduction was right. Someone _was_ after Sherry.

"You've met Conan Edogawa properly since I spoke with you the night he was kidnapped, right?" Vermouth asked in a seemingly abrupt change of topic.

"Oh… Yes, I've met him properly; why?"

"The Organization is rather taken with him. Conan is a remarkably intelligent and resourceful little boy that Gin has been challenging from the shadows with various Black Organization schemes to test his skills and mettle, similar to what you underwent when you were a NOC before you proved yourself and Gin revealed the Organization's true nature," Vermouth said.

It was there, just lying under the surface and could not have been made plainer than if she had actually spoken his name. It lingered in the too-long pauses she made after saying 'you'… the 'and him' that should have followed after her breaths. 'You and Scotch'. Him and Hiromitsu. They had been in the police academy together… infiltrated the Black Organization together… fought alongside each other, feared for each other, loved each other… and then they'd stayed together… until that _bastard Akai had killed him…!_

"Bourbon, you'll break the glass."

Bourbon startled and relaxed his ever-tightening grip before the glass broke. He didn't much fancy picking shards of glass out of his hand tonight. "Why are you telling me this, Vermouth?" he said, unable to completely mask his resigned sigh.

Vermouth let out a low whistle. "You really are out of it tonight. I just told you a seven-year-old child has been continuously set challenges worthy of a Black Organization NOC agent and you're not the least bit curious."

"Wait, what?" Bourbon said, taken aback.

"Oh yes," Vermouth said with a delighted smile on her purple-painted lips. "He's proven to be quite the formidable opponent and I wouldn't be remotely surprised if he was already aware that black is your color. After all, Kir was given the go-ahead to let the FBI know you would be investigating Sherry's disappearance _long_ before it was even conceived in Gin's mind to assign you your current mission."

Bourbon felt a familiar, vicious jolt in his gut at the mention of the agency _that guy_ worked for. "Why was my codename given out to the FBI if there were no plans for me at the time?" he said tightly.

"Validation," she said and took another sip of her cocktail. "The FBI discovered that Kir was CIA, so she had to provide them seemingly-important information shortly after we rescued her to keep up the ruse of her being a NOC working for the Black Organization. The fact that you showed up here in the area where the FBI seems to be focusing their efforts is purely coincidental on our end."

"You think that boy, Conan, knows I work for the Black Organization?" Bourbon said, switching topics in an effort to distract himself from further talk of the FBI.

Vermouth nodded. "Absolutely. He's probably expecting you to make a move soon and that _video_ you discovered on Detective Mouri's computer could be the catalyst we need to set you up."

"Set me up? I don't follow you," Bourbon said, perplexed.

Vermouth set her glass down and gave him a smile that held no warmth. Her mask. "How would you like to help me create another little Black Organization scenario for Conan? The ring Sherry is wearing in the video tells us where she will be and when, so we can pretend we're hunting her down while we're within Conan's proximity, but in truth, we will be secretly assisting Sherry in relocating to a more secure hiding place. Perhaps her presence on the train can also be used as bait to lure out your mystery computer hacker."

Bourbon eyed her warily. "I thought Gin was in charge of the Black Organization scenarios," he said slowly.

"Oh, he is…," Vermouth said lightly. "… but he's not the only one who can create them. I was personally involved in a confrontation not too long ago that Gin had no hand in."

Bourbon's brow furrowed. "Didn't Calvados commit suicide during that engagement?"

Vermouth gave a mournful sigh. "An unfortunate and terrible tragedy I was unable to prevent."

"But didn't you try to kill Sherry once?" he pressed. "I thought you hated her, so why are you helping her?"

"I _do_ hate her," Vermouth said and her turquoise blue eyes hardened briefly before the iciness disappeared behind her poker face. "However, if something out there is targeting Sherry, I can't very well settle my score with a dead woman, can I?"

"I suppose not," Bourbon agreed reluctantly. "So, what kind of scenario do you have in mind?"

()()()()()

Gin had an _enormous_ amount of respect and admiration for 'that person'. He was the one who had found him and his sister homeless on the streets of Nagano in the middle of October when time was pushing them relentlessly closer towards a frozen death, and 'that person' had offered them a place within the Men in Black. He had given them a home, a job, and a purpose, and Gin was forever grateful to him. In many ways, he saw the old man as a father figure and there were moments they'd shared where he wondered if perhaps 'that person' saw him as the son he'd never had.

This was _not_ one of those moments.

Right now, he felt _anything_ but kindly towards his Boss as he stood in the large office before the wide desk and glared angrily into the old man's deep, sunken black eyes that flashed with equal fury.

"You're out of line, Gin," he said in a low, deadly voice, his lips barely moving as he spoke.

"Sorry," Gin spat.

The old man's eyes narrowed. "Say it when you actually mean it."

"Then that'll never happen, sir..." he said through gritted teeth. "... because letting Vermouth anywhere _near_ Sherry after she's already tried to kill her once after _you_ went out of your way to exclude her from being informed of Sherry's status in the first place is _the_ single stupidest judgment call you have ever made."

"I've already reeled her back in and restricted some of her privileges since that incident. She won't dare defy my explicit orders," the old man said confidently as he laced his long, gnarled fingers together atop the spherical pommel of his cane.

"But this is _Vermouth_ we're talking about!" Gin burst out and slammed his palms flat on the desk. "She's a treacherous snake who will find a way around your orders to take advantage of _any_ opportunity to advance her agenda and she wants. Sherry. _dead!_ You're just so blinded by your favoritism of her that the mere notion of her double-crossing _you_ is absurd!"

The temperature in the room seemed to drop significantly and 'that person' slowly stood up from his chair behind the desk. His back was permanently stooped and he would have only been average height in his youth, but his shorter physical stature did nothing to diminish the sense of grandness and regality that radiated outward from his person, nor the feeling Gin had of being looked down upon by this powerful and ancient man.

"You forget to whom you're speaking, Edward Kuroda, son of former Nagano Inspector Hyoe Kuroda," he said with ringing authority. "I am Renya Karasuma, a child born of the Meiji period. I have seen the turn of two centuries and the rise and fall of the Japanese Empire. I was one of the initial financial investors of the American Men in Black in the 1960s and I am the Founder and Chief of the Japanese branch. I am one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, and you think I can be so easily duped by a woman not even half my age?"

Gin retracted his hands from the desk and clenched his jaw but said nothing.

"I am well aware of Vermouth's true nature, even more so than _you_ are, Gin, and I do not appreciate you questioning my judgment of her, so I will only repeat myself once. Vermouth will _not_ disobey me, and I forbid you from interfering with her work on this scenario."

"But sir-!" Gin protested, but Karasuma raised a hand with a piercing look, and he fell silent.

"I do not forbid interpersonal relationships between coworkers in the Men in Black unlike many companies, nor did I file criminal charges against you for engaging in a sexual relationship with an underage girl when I easily could have," Karasuma said coolly and Gin flinched. "My trust in you then was happily not misplaced and I am glad that your relationship with young Sherry is so strong and healthy, but right now, you are letting your emotions get the better of you and you are not thinking clearly. You are in no fit state to be involved in this operation. Vermouth will be in charge of the new scenario, and you will not interfere or participate unless she requests your assistance; is that clear?"

"Yes, sir…" Gin ground out bitterly.

"Good. You are dismissed," Karasuma said with a wave of his hand.

Gin's eyes narrowed as his hands clenched into tight fists, looking like he either wanted to say something or strike the old man, but he did neither. He spun on his heel with his long hair whipping about his shoulders and he stormed out of the office, slamming the door loudly behind him.

"I take it from the storm clouds gathering in your eyes that your meeting with the Boss didn't go as you hoped?" an unfortunately familiar male voice asked rhetorically from his left.

"Rum…" Gin growled as he glanced over at the Second in Command leaning casually against the wall with his arms crossed.

For somebody who preferred to use indirect methods of communication and didn't like showing his face in public more than he had to, he sure didn't dress like he was trying to be inconspicuous. He looked like a tall, towering daimyo straight out of the Sengoku period in a full, formal black kimono, a black haori, and gray-and-white-striped hakama with his long, tightly-curled brown hair pulled up into a high ponytail at the back. Rum's working brown right eye tracked his movements and so did his prosthetic left eye with a slight lag. That missing eye from seventeen years ago was why he still didn't like to reveal his physical presence, despite Curaçao having been his eyes for the past seven years.

"You may not like his decision, Kuroda, but Lord Karasuma knows what he's doing and has reasons for everything," Rum said solemnly.

Gin stopped and narrowed his green eyes hatefully at the older, taller, and broader man that was his sister's lover. "That's easy for you to say, _Asaka_ , but I wonder if you would feel so blasé about this if it was _Curaçao_ that Vermouth's presence threatened instead of Sherry."

Rum only gave an infuriating shrug. "Who can say? I don't typically waste time or brain power dwelling on such useless hypotheticals. Vermouth was the one who trained Curaçao when she first got here after all, and she was quite taken with her, so it's difficult to conceive of a situation where she would suddenly turn around and try to kill her."

"Drop dead, Rum," Gin muttered darkly as he stalked past Karasuma's right-hand man.

"You've been telling me that for years, and yet the universe still hasn't seen fit to answer your prayers," Rum said with an exasperated sigh.

Gin looked back over his shoulder at the man and scowled. "Maybe my prayers would have a better chance of being answered if you didn't send my _sister_ out to do your dirty work."

Rum's nostrils flared and his working eye flashed with anger while the prosthetic one remained eerily still. "I _need_ her…" he said stiffly.

"To be a pair of working eyes or to blow you off," Gin sneered. "You were doing just fine the previous nine or ten odd years before we arrived after you lost your eye and got the Akai patriarch killed."

Rum's right hand twitched convulsively, and Gin felt the cool comforting weight of his gun in his own left coat pocket. He would not draw first blood, but he would not hesitate to shoot the Vice Chief of the MiB either.

"Tch. Needling me as you always have; you're still the same arrogant brat that you were when you first came here," Rum said through gritted teeth as he slid his arms into the sleeves of his kimono.

"And _you_ are still the same cocky prick that gets off on ordering people around," Gin retorted.

Rum's eyes became lidded and a thin smirk traced his lips. "Your twin doesn't seem to mind."

It was an honest miracle that Rum did not drop dead under the withering glare that Gin fixed him with, or by the Beretta he had grabbed out of reflex.

Rum released a heavy sigh and ran his hand through his curls. "Why are you still so dead set on hating me after all these years? I can understand when you first arrived and were worried about my intentions towards your sister, especially with the eighteen-year age difference between us, but we've known each other for ten years now. I've never given Emma cause to fear me nor have I ever tried to restrict her freedoms or overstep the boundaries of our relationship. When we were just casual lovers, I didn't let myself get jealous or abuse my power against her other lovers because I had no more of a claim on her than anyone else and I respected that. We've been an exclusive couple for two years now, but you _still_ won't accept that my feelings for her are real and that she loves me back just as much. What do I have to do? Swear a blood oath? I'll do it if it will finally get you to stop being so hostile towards me, at least for _her_ sake."

Gin did not doubt that, but that wasn't the problem.

"As long as you make Emma happy, I won't have a reason to kill you, but you will never be worthy of her," he said in a low voice to the older man.

Rum's brown eyes hardened into daggers. "And _you're_ worthy of Sherry, are you?" he said coolly.

Gin's own green eyes narrowed and he started walking away. "No. I'm not."

And that was the problem. There were too many parallels between him and Rum regarding the woman of their choice for his comfort, but Sherry still wanted him just as Curaçao wanted Rum, so what could he do? What could _either_ of them do?

And how could he protect Sherry when 'that person' had tied his hands? He didn't care what 'that person' said about Vermouth, Gin did not trust her and could not just stand idly by while she was given free rein to do as she wished. He did not believe for an instant that Vermouth wouldn't try and kill Sherry again. He _knew_ that woman would not need nor _want_ his involvement, and his inability to act was infuriating. It was just like last time, only worse because he knew about it in advance and it was with Bourbon instead of Calvados- Bourbon…!

Gin had his phone out in seconds and dialed Bourbon's number. He still didn't like him, but this was the only way…

" _Hello, Gin,"_ Bourbon answered.

If he was calling him by his codename, then it meant he was somewhere free to speak openly. "Is Vermouth with you right now?" Gin demanded.

" _No, she's not, and I'm not sure how I feel about you calling_ _ **me**_ _if you're looking for her,"_ he said.

Gin scowled. "I'm not, but what I'm about to tell you is not for that woman's ears and I don't want word of this getting back to Rum or 'that person' either."

" _A secret from 'that person'?"_ Bourbon asked quietly. Gin did not miss the note of suspicion in his tone. It sounded just as bad out loud as in his head.

"I've been forbidden from being involved in this scenario Vermouth is concocting, but I don't care if 'that person' vouches for her. I would _not_ put it past her for her to turn this into another secret plot to kill Sherry," he said in a low voice and then frowned in thought. "You were friends with Akemi too, weren't you?"

Akemi had been on good terms with so many people who had otherwise hated each other that he had often joked about her befriending literally half the Organization.

"I know you hated Akai…" the only other thing he and Bourbon shared apart from their friendship with Akemi and their half-Japanese heritage. "… but if you have any kind feelings left towards Akemi, then you will help me do whatever it takes to protect her little sister."

" _I_ _ **did**_ _hate Akai, but my enmity towards him has no bearing on my regard for Akemi. What do you need me to do?"_ Bourbon said seriously.

"Vermouth wants Sherry dead. Your job is to make sure that doesn't happen," Gin summarized simply. "Find out every detail of the plan and know both your role and hers inside and out, then immediately call her out if she does something suspicious or makes even a small change. There can be no surprises. Don't let her get away with anything and do not, under any circumstances, let Vermouth _anywhere_ near Sherry."

" _Understood, and what shall I do if she_ _ **does**_ _act out?"_ Bourbon asked.

Gin's eyes glinted dangerously and were already narrowing in anger. "If it's a little thing, then abandon the scenario and stick to her like glue. If she gives you _any_ cause to believe she's going after Sherry, then arrest her. I will be waiting for you at the Nagoya train station."

" _I thought you said you were forbidden to be involved."_

Gin smirked. "I am, but the scenario ends when the train pulls into the station and Sherry is free to escape on her own, and nobody's forbidden me from being involved in the cleanup of this operation. I want a quick debriefing from you when you get off the train and I will deal with Vermouth if it comes to that."

" _Roger that. Anything else you need of me?"_ Bourbon inquired.

Gin shook his head. "No, that's all."

" _Alright, we'll talk later then,"_ Bourbon said and hung up.

Gin ended the disconnected call too and shoved his phone back into his coat. Receiving Bourbon's debriefing was a legitimate excuse to be at the Nagoya station, but that wasn't the main reason he wanted to wait there for the Mystery Train. He hadn't seen Sherry in months and he wanted to see with his own eyes that she came out of his alive. She had to. He could not allow a repeat incident to occur with a different outcome, but he was forewarned this time and Bourbon was no Calvados.

This whole situation still bothered him though, and it wasn't just because he knew he wouldn't be sleeping well until it was over. His instincts were screaming at him about Vermouth. If it wasn't for the fact that Vermouth was in America when Akemi was killed, and he was sure that the one responsible was the same one after the Arquillian, he would be inclined to think _she_ was the one he should be hunting down so that Sherry could finally come home.

()()()()()

"Have you found her yet?" Bourbon whispered of Vermouth walking just ahead of him and disguised as Akai with a burned face.

"No, not yet, and I suppose you've also been unsuccessful thus far," Vermouth said in a perfect imitation of Akai's voice.

"Yeah…" he confirmed. "Maybe she didn't even get on the train?"

"We have plenty of time before the train puts in at Nagoya to find her; don't lose faith so easily," Vermouth reprimanded.

Bourbon opened his mouth to retort when the train's loudspeakers suddenly dinged on and he stopped to listen.

A polite, professional male voice began to speak to the passengers on board and said, _**"May I have your attention, please. In light of an accident that just took place on the train, we are considering changing our course and stopping at the nearest station. We apologize for the inconvenience, but please remain in your rooms until further notice, and refrain from leaving them if at all possible."**_

"An accident?" Bourbon murmured curiously.

"Try and find out what happened while I continue to look for Sherry," Vermouth hissed back to him over her shoulder without pausing in her stride. "It might be nothing we need to worry about, but if it's not, then we'll need to move fast."

"Agreed," Bourbon said as they turned around the corner of the next Carriage and his blue eyes lit up with interest as they focused on a familiar detective's daughter standing near the end of the hallway and looking up at the loudspeakers worriedly. "Oh? Looks like fate is in my favor."

He approached the young woman at a casual walking pace and once her gaze naturally fell upon him, it brightened in recognition. "Wow, you're on this train too, Mr. Amuro?" she asked.

"Yes, I was lucky that I managed to get myself a ticket. I just met Teacher Mouri over in the dining car, too," he said.

Ran's friend, a young woman with short brown hair lighter than hers and watching him keenly put up her hand and whispered loudly to Ran, "Hey, Ran, who's this hot guy?"

"He's the detective I told you about the other day, the one who wanted to be Dad's apprentice," Ran told her in a normal-volume voice, making no effort to play along in a gossipy conspiratorial whisper.

"This is him? Nice to meet you! I'm Sonoko Suzuki!" Ran's friend said brightly.

Ahh, a possible relative of the Advisor to the Suzuki Group then? "A pleasure," he said politely and turned his attention back to Ran with a puzzled expression. "Anyway, it seems some sort of accident happened. Do you know anything about it?"

Worry instantly clouded her face once more and she leaned forward, drawing her hand up to her face. Bourbon imitated her forward motion so that she could whisper directly to him without being overheard. "It seems there's been a murder on the train. Sera and Conan are still at the scene," she said quietly.

"I see, then it seems it might be wise to have Teacher Mouri handle this," he said seriously, but his mind was already preoccupied with this new information.

A murder on the train? As Vermouth had said, it could be nothing, or it could be an alien-related incident, but the latter didn't seem likely. If there _were_ any criminally-inclined aliens on board, such as his possible mystery hacker or even Pandora, then their only target should be Sherry. If Conan was already at the scene of the crime, he should recognize her if she was the victim. Sera, or rather Akai's little sister, Masumi, being present on the train and at the crime scene was a complication he had not counted on. They didn't need a second pair of keen detective eyes noticing their movements and making a mess of things in an already-dangerous situation. They would have to remove her from the action somehow…

()()()()()

Train platforms were usually full of people. It was normal, even expected. What was _not_ normal was the large squadron of police officers coming up onto the platform with Advisor Jirokichi Suzuki leading the way. Gin and Vodka hid behind one of the pillars near the trains and carefully peered around it to listen in.

Such carefulness ended up not being necessary because Jirokichi Suzuki was yelling at the top of his lungs for everyone to hear, "Heed my command, troops! Breach the train the moment it arrives, bind the confounded murderer hand and foot with lightning speed and bring them forth to me!" His impassioned words were met with silence by the officers present. "Why won't you answer me?! Why?!"

"Advisor Suzuki, please stop giving my subordinates orders without permission," said a slightly taller man with his hands raised in a calming gesture. He was probably one of the Division One Aichi police inspectors. "Allow us Aichi police to handle this."

"What! The train crowned with my surname, Suzuki, became a murder site! You dare to tell me to just sit and wait, you fool?!" Jirokichi exploded and spat in the man's face. "Upon capturing the miscreant, hang high the head of our filthy quarry on the central tower of Nagoya Castle!"

"Hey, Aniki, that sounds like somebody was murdered aboard the train," Vodka said worriedly and looked up at him. "You don't think it was-"

"-Sherry?" Gin finished.

He didn't know, but before he could say as much, he felt his phone go off with a text alert and he pulled it out of his coat. It was a message from Bourbon and it read:

 _Vermouth says Sherry's aboard the train. A murder took place, but she doesn't seem to be involved. The murderer does not appear to be an alien, but I'm keeping all possibilities open. Currently no signs of alien activity at all. Everything is proceeding as planned. No suspicious behaviors observed._

 _\- Bourbon_

Gin sighed in relief. "It wasn't Sherry, just some unrelated incident. She's safe for now."

Vodka exhaled heavily and smiled. "Thank goodness," he said.

Gin nodded, still staring at the words on his phone. "Ah, but she's not in the clear yet…" He wouldn't relax until he saw her get off the train here at Nagoya with his own eyes.

()()()()()

"Eh?! You sent the video footage from the camp trip last week to the Mouri Detective Agency?!" Dr. Agasa exclaimed and Haibara felt her blood chill.

Last week, she had taken the temporary antidote to become Shiho Miyano in order to rescue herself and her friends that had been trapped in a burning cabin before they burned alive. The kids had taken a video of her and then _sent it to the Agency!_

"Yes. We want to properly thank the lady who saved us, so we figured a great detective might be able to figure out who she was," Mitsuhiko explained.

No!

"Oh, I watched that video along with Dad," Ran said, "He said there's no way to find someone with just a face and a voice, but if we posted it online, maybe someone would recognize her."

No, no, no, no!

"That lady had a Mystery Train Pass Ring, so we've all been hoping we might see her here!" Ayumi said excitedly.

"Haven't seen her yet though!" Genta pointed out no less enthusiastic.

The ring that she hadn't been able to take off! If the kids had figured they'd find her here just from that, then if anybody _else_ had seen that video, they would make the same leaps in logic the kids had. But then… the reason for the ominous feeling in her chest…! Someone here on the train was after her- that man! The one who looked like Akai with a weird burn scar on his face was when the feeling had been strongest, but it couldn't… that couldn't have been the _real_ Akai! He was Subaru right now!

Haibara felt a sudden jolt to her memory and shivered anew. _A predatory grin. Green eyes flashing red. Choking pressure. Six dead dazzleflies. "Their venom better be worth it."_ Could it be…? She'd imitated Gin so flawlessly before; who was to say Pandora couldn't fashion herself into Akai's likeness as well? But if it really was Pandora she was sensing, then… what should she do? She was trapped on the train for several more hours, and there was nowhere she could escape to and no place to hide where she wouldn't eventually be found. Gin couldn't help her and Kudo… this had nothing to do with him or the 'Black Organization'. Vermouth might not be willing to hurt him, but there was no such guarantee on Pandora and he didn't know anything about the aliens living on Earth. Kudo still had an active bounty on his head from a Quantaban mob boss he'd helped put away without realizing his true alien nature. She couldn't risk involving him and putting a target on his back in his current form.

She glanced first at her friends by the window, and then Ran sitting next to her. If Pandora was here, then she couldn't stay. She would be putting everyone in danger. Her phone vibrating in her dress pocket startled her. Haibara pulled it out and looked at the screen. A new email? She didn't recognize the address. She opened it and her irises shrunk into tiny pinpricks of fear:

 _Are you ready?_

 _\- Vermouth_

Haibara trembled. No way! _Vermouth…!_ Not Pandora, but _Vermouth_! Why?! She'd thought Vermouth had given up on her after Kudo had brought their confrontation to a stalemate! Was this just another scenario or was she trying to finish what she'd started at the shipping yard several months ago? No… that blood lust she'd sensed was too real. Vermouth meant to kill her this time and there was nothing to stop her from accomplishing that objective.

"Haibara?" She looked up startled. It was Mitsuhiko who'd called her. "Did you get an email?"

"Who's it from?" Ayumi asked excitedly.

"Is it from Conan?" Genta said.

"No, it's just spam," she lied. She put away her phone and jumped off her seat, heading straight for the door.

"Hm? Ai, where are you going?" Dr. Agasa asked as she was opening the door.

"The bathroom. I'm going to take some medicine for my cold, so I'll be a while," Haibara said.

A _very_ long while.

"Then I'll go with you-" Ran started to say and stood up, but Haibara quickly closed the door behind her.

No… No, Ran definitely couldn't come with her. She didn't know why Vermouth had been so hesitant to shoot her last time, but she didn't want to put Ran between her and Vermouth again. Never again… Haibara ran off down the hallway towards where Carriage 6 connected to Carriage 7 and hid around the corner just in time.

She heard the door of the room she'd just vacated open and Ran's voice call out, "Ai, where are you?"

Panting from more than just her cold, Haibara reached into her other dress pocket and pulled out a light green plastic container and opened the lid. There were six wells, and all of them filled with some kind of pill or capsule. She picked up one of the red-and-white capsules from the left bottom row and held it up to her eye level. This was the temporary antidote to the Apoptoxin that would change her back into Shiho Miyano for the second time in a week. Vermouth knew she was stuck as a child, but her friends and Ran didn't know Shiho except as the nice lady that saved the kids from the fire. They would not be as torn up over finding her adult-sized corpse as they would be finding Ai Haibara's.

With shaking hands and tears beading at the corners of her eyes, she closed and repocketed the medicine box and clenched her hand into a fist around the antidote. 'I'm sorry, Gin. I couldn't keep my promise to you,' she thought.

The Carriage 6 door that connected to Carriage 7 opened and Haibara gasped in shock. Subaru came through the door and he stared down at her, though the light from the sun reflected off his fake glasses in a way that made them blindingly white.

He smirked. "Just like your sister, I can read all of your moves."

Her already frantic heartrate sped up even more. Why was he doing this now after she'd recently accepted that he was the real Akai?!

"Now would you step this way into our area?" Subaru asked in a quiet, sinister tone.

Haibara didn't answer, but quickly darted past his legs into Carriage 7 away from her friends and made for the empty Room B that had belonged to the victim. She couldn't deal with this right now! Whether Subaru was Akai or Pandora or _whoever_ , she _needed_ to become Shiho first!

She threw the door open and nearly tripped over her feet in shock when she discovered the room wasn't empty. "You?!" she gasped.

Kudo's mother winked at her with a playful smile and said, "Yep! You're safe now, Ai, so there's no need to take that antidote anymore. Just sit tight here and leave the rest to me!"

"I… Huh…?" Haibara stuttered as she stared blankly at the cheerful woman. She had _no_ clue what was going on.

()()()()()

Vermouth had informed him that she'd found Sherry and was currently working on setting up the smoke bombs that would cause the rear Carriages to empty towards the front and draw Sherry alone towards the back of the train where they would better be able to help her. They were even making use of Sherry's fear of Vermouth to send her the direction they wanted her to go. The only problem Bourbon had left to resolve was how to get Masumi away from the crime scene so that when he arrived in Carriage 8, he could issue the fake warning about a fire starting in the victim's room and send the probably-pyrophobic Carriage 8 passengers in a panic. Until he came up with something though, he was just going to have to sit in his room in Carriage 7 and wait to take advantage of an opportunity.

An opportunity did come to him. He heard running feet in the corridor beyond and as soon as they passed his room, he opened the door and peered around. It was her: Akai's little sister.

He sent off a quick text to Vermouth: _The obstacle is heading to Carriage 6._ Then he closed the door again and waited to receive word that Vermouth had intercepted her.

He didn't have long to wait. Several minutes after he sent the warning, a new text alert popped up on his phone and he read the message Vermouth sent: _The obstacle is out of the way. Proceed as planned._

'Perfect,' he thought as he left the room and started making his way down to Carriage 8.

If the murder hadn't been solved yet, then he could always lend his _own_ formidable detective skills to the investigation. Despite all the hiccups that had occurred so far, everything had _still_ gone according to the plan he and Vermouth had concocted, and she had not acted out as Gin had feared.

()()()()()

Haibara was sitting alone in Carriage 7 of Room B still seven and _still_ clueless about what was going on when the loudspeaker came on for the second time that trip. **_"This is an emergency announcement! A fire has been reported in Carriage 8! For your safety, the passengers in Carriages 6 and 7 should evacuate to the Carriages at the front of the train!"_**

First a murder and now a fire? Was Carriage 8 just cursed?! Mrs. Kudo had told her not to leave, but if a fire had started, then she was only one Carriage up from it and she wasn't safe here anymore! She had just laid her hand upon the handle to turn it when the door was suddenly yanked outward and she knocked straight into Conan.

"Kudo, what's-?" she started only to jump back when he shoved a phone right in her face.

"Phantom Thief Kid is dressed as you. He's getting ready to meet the Organization; you have to tell him what to say!" he said quickly and his blue eyes were frighteningly intense.

She took the phone out of his hands solely to stop him from accidentally hitting her in the nose and glared at him. "Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on?!" she demanded.

"There's no time! The fire's just a trick by the Organization to lure you to the back, so we gotta act fast and I have to leave now to keep Vermouth stalled in Mom's room!" Kudo said sharply.

"Hah…?!" she squawked incomprehensibly. Was he pulling her leg right now?!

"Phantom Thief Kid's on the other end waiting for you! Hurry!" he shouted and dashed out of the room as quick as he'd come.

Haibara stared blankly at the place he'd disappeared before huffing and closing the room door again. It seemed she wasn't evacuating to the front cars after all. She put the phone to her ear and said, "Hey. I don't like bad taste jokes, so if you aren't the Phantom Thief Kid, you'd better tell me right now or I promise it will _not_ be pleasant for you later."

A voice that sounded remarkably like Kudo's normal teenage voice sighed heavily over the other end and said, _"Believe me, Miss, I'd rather be doing just about anything else right now."_

()()()()()

Bourbon heard the coughing first before he saw the young woman, but he was still surprised when he laid eyes on her and the first words out of his mouth were, "You really _are_ Hell Angel's daughter. You look just like her."

Sherry gasped and whirled around in alarm. He had first met Akemi when he was little and her mother, Elena, had treated his injuries from the fights he used to get into all the time, but Shiho had not been born yet. He had been genuinely shocked to find Akemi again all-grown-up when he and Hiromitsu Morofushi had joined the Black Organization as NOCs. How could sweet, innocent Akemi have possibly gotten mixed up in a secret criminal organization was what he'd wondered at the time. Naturally, everything became _much_ clearer after Gin officially inducted him and his partner into the Organization and revealed its true name and the nature of its work: The Men in Black. Despite running into Akemi several times and even reviving his old friendship with her, he had never had the fortune (or misfortune if the rumors of her sharp tongue were true) of meeting Akemi's much beloved little sister, Shiho, until now.

"A pleasure to meet you. My codename is Bourbon," he announced.

Without fully taking his eyes off Sherry, he sent a quick text to Vermouth, alerting her that he had found Sherry in Carriage 8 as expected. After that, he repocketed his phone and gave the reddish-brunette woman before him his undivided attention.

"Do you ever recall hearing that codename?" he asked out of curiosity. "I've met your family before."

"Yes, I've heard of you," Sherry said stiffly. Her voice was as cool as her eyes. "You're a member of the Organization and a rival of my sister's boyfriend, Dai Moroboshi. From what my sister told me, there was a lot of antipathy between you two."

'Antipathy' was a _gross_ understatement of his deep-seated hatred for Akai. Anyway, Sherry seemed to be speaking to him as the traitor-to-the-Organization that the rumors at Headquarters had assigned to her. He wondered if that was intentional. No matter, he could play along with that.

"Indeed, and just as I suspected, he turned out to be an FBI dog," Bourbon said, still smug from being one of the first people to figure it out before it was officially confirmed. "I couldn't believe the reports that he'd been killed, so I disguised myself as him and wandered around people close to him to watch their reactions, but all I could figure out from that is that he really _is_ dead."

And how very frustrating that dead-ended investigation had turned out to be. Gin had freaked out when he heard word that somebody who looked like Akai was running around Beika, then been _livid_ with him for wasting time on what he called a 'petty grievance'. He was a damned hypocrite; Gin had been even closer to Akemi than himself and absolutely hated Akai's guts for using one of his best friends.

"Anyway, my partner who helped me make that disguise is the one who's now disguising as him in my place," Bourbon continued uninterrupted from his mental side tangent. "The fact that you've appeared before me shows how much she terrifies you."

He'd said it to try and bait her into reacting, but apart from the slight narrowing of her eyes, she didn't respond to his words at all. She simply maintained her stoic expression, showing no sign of the truth of his words. Bourbon was impressed; Sherry was only eighteen and there were agents much older than her that wouldn't be able to remain so calm in such a situation.

"Now would you put your hands up and slowly walk backwards?" he said as he pulled out his gun from underneath his black vest and pointed it at her. Sherry raised her hands dutifully. "We'll go to the luggage car behind Carriage 8."

The walk to the back was a slow one because he wouldn't allow Sherry to turn around and see where she was going, but he wasn't in much of a hurry now and he made sure to give her adequate instruction to not bump into anything. In this way, he directed Sherry to the luggage car.

"Now, please open the door and head inside," he directed with his gun still pointing at her.

She had to turn her body slightly to reach the door and push it aside, but she still maintained eye contact with him and readjusted her position to its original orientation as she walked backward over the luggage car threshold. She had been quiet the whole time and he didn't know her well enough to know if that was normal or not.

"Fear not. I intend to take you back to the Organization alive. I'm going to destroy the link between these two Carriages with an explosive to break off the luggage car…" he said as he pulled out a bomb from the other side of his vest and set it on the Carriage connectors. "… and after it stops, my partners will come and collect you. Until then, I'm afraid I'll have to knock you out," he added apologetically.

She didn't seem bothered by the suggestion of such drastic measures, or at least she didn't make any form of protest he recognized. Her eyes glanced off to the right.

"Don't worry, you'll be sleeping at a safe distance from the door, so you don't need to worry about getting caught in the explosion," he said reassuringly.

"Apparently I _do_ have to worry," Sherry said after he'd barely finished his sentence and she removed a white sheet off to her right. "This luggage car is full of explosives."

Bourbon's mouth fell open and he stared stunned at the young woman. Explosives? Why were there explosives here?

"Looks like there was a slip-up in your preparations," Sherry continued in an almost bored tone.

He slowly closed his mouth. 'I see…' he thought grimly, recalling Gin's words. 'Vermouth really _is_ determined to kill her, no matter what.'

" _Vermouth wants Sherry dead. Your job is to make sure that doesn't happen."_

That was what Gin had told him. "Guess I have no choice. How about you come this way?" Bourbon said.

"Sorry, but I decline," Sherry said and shut the luggage car door in his face.

"Hmph. You're as difficult as they said," Bourbon huffed, remembering what Akemi used to tell him about Shiho and what he'd heard by word of mouth from other agents who'd been forced to interact with the young scientist. "I might have to get a little rough with you," he warned.

He was just preparing himself to force the door open when the door _behind_ him creaked open and he spotted a shadowy figure obscured by the false smoke standing in the doorway.

Bourbon brought his gun to bear on the figure and glared at it. There was only one person it could possibly be and he wasn't going to let her anywhere near Akemi's little sister. "Vermouth? Sorry, but she's coming with me-"

His last words were cut off by a metallic clink and something was tossed towards him from the smoke. He managed to finally identify it as it rolled towards the connecting link and he gave a start.

"A grenade?!" he exclaimed. Who-! He whirled back around and shouted, "Who's there?! Who are you?!"

The smoke continued to hide the figure from his view as they were closing the door, but when there was just a crack left, he thought he saw a flash of a familiar thick-lashed, sharp avocado-green eye. An eye that belonged to a person who was by all accounts dead… Bourbon stared at the closed door in stunned disbelief, his impression of that single eye strengthening rather than fading with every passing second.

The explosive heat and shockwave blasted into his back and reminded him too late about the active grenade. He quickly covered his head from the flying metal debris and swore under his breath as he watched the luggage car drift further away from the train until it slowly came to a stop on a bridge.

Just as he'd started plotting how to rectify this situation, a fiery orange explosion engulfed the luggage car and Bourbon cried out in shock. Sherry! Akemi's sister- she was…! She was still in there…!

()()()()()

"There. That's the end," Vermouth said as she closed the program on her phone that had last read 'Activation Device Launched'.

"No way! It can't be!" Yukiko exclaimed in denial and stuck her head out the window.

"Don't worry. I waited for the sound of my partner destroying the link to the luggage car before I detonated the bomb, so the train won't derail," Vermouth assured her old friend, without the faintest trace of remorse for what she'd done.

"Ai…" Yukiko said faintly, still watching smoking wreck that was the former luggage car.

Vermouth turned and left her behind, feeling both satisfied and gleeful that her revenge was complete and the last of the Miyano clan was now dead.

()()()()()

With the loud ruckus on the train platform, it was a small miracle that Gin even heard his phone ring in order to answer it. He pulled it out and frowned when he saw the number.

"Bourbon…" he murmured and answered it immediately. "What's going on? Has Vermouth done something?"

" _Gin, she… the luggage car, I couldn't… she blew it up, but I swear I had no forewarning at all until we were there!"_ Bourbon exclaimed frantically, and the emotional incoherence he was spouting was such a complete break in his normal persona that Gin felt himself growing alarmed.

"Bourbon, shut up and try again when you can speak in complete sentences," Gin barked irritably.

He heard Bourbon take a deep breath over the line, but his voice was no calmer when he started speaking again. _"Everything had been going exactly as we planned. Vermouth didn't deviate from the plan we both agreed on, but when I got Sherry to the luggage car and was going to blow up the connecting link so that we could safely get her off the train to pick her up and relocate her later, Sherry found explosives_ _ **everywhere**_ _in the luggage car! I have no idea how Vermouth did it and she wasn't anywhere_ _ **near**_ _Sherry! I tried to get Sherry out of the luggage car, but she was being stubborn and somebody – not Vermouth, I don't know who it was – snuck up behind me and tossed in a grenade that blew up the connectors to separate the luggage car from the rest of the train!"_

Gin's green eyes went wide and his breath caught in his throat. Please, no! "What happened to Sherry?! Bourbon! _Tell me_ you got her out of there!" he yelled hoarsely.

" _I couldn't! I was trying to figure out how to when the luggage car blew up! Sherry was… she was still inside it!"_

Gin's fingers went slack and he nearly dropped the phone, his eyes staring blankly ahead. Bourbon was saying something about the train making an emergency stop at the nearest station, but Gin hardly heard him. He felt cold and numb and his brain seemed to have stopped working. It couldn't be… Sherry was… _Sherry was…!_

 _ **Vermouth!**_

In an instant, the numb ice in his veins turned into raging fire and the blood lust consumed him. Vermouth would pay… _Oh_ , how she would pay _dearly_ for murdering his beloved! Death was too kind for the likes of her; he wouldn't be satisfied until he had that woman literally _screaming_ and _begging_ him for death, and he. wouldn't. grant it. until the _absolute_ end.

"Find her," he snarled to Bourbon still on the phone. "Find Vermouth and arrest her for murdering a fellow agent. Scour the whole damn train for her if you have to, but capture her and bring her before me. I don't care how you go about doing it or decide to keep her restrained, but if you let her go or lose her, then I promise Pandora is going to be the very _least_ of your worries for the rest of your short, miserable life."

He didn't wait for Bourbon to answer him or not before he hung up on him and dialed _that woman's_ number with seething fury. His teeth ground together when the call connected and he heard her answer with a surprised _"Gin?"_

"You've gone too far this time, Vermouth, and I'm going to make you regret _ever_ messing with me," he swore in a deadly quiet voice.

" _I'm sorry, Gin, but I'm afraid I don't know what I could've done this time to incur your ire. Where are you even calling me from right now?"_ Vermouth asked, sounding perplexed.

"Don't you _dare_ play coy with me right now, Vermouth!" he spat, his anger and hatred boiling over. "And where I am is irrelevant because Bourbon is searching for you on the Bell Tree Express this very instant and will bring you _straight to_ _me_ in less than twelve hours as part of your punishment for _murdering Sherry!_ "

" _What? Sherry's been murdered?"_ she said both surprised and confused. _"Why do you say that? You're not on the Mystery Train, so how would you know if she was or wasn't?"_

"So you _weren't_ the one who blew up the luggage car with Sherry inside?!" he said sarcastically.

Vermouth gasped, _"The luggage car! I heard the explosion from my room, and I saw it burning when I looked out the window, but I didn't know Sherry was actually in there! How do_ _ **you**_ _know this?"_

"Bourbon just called and told me that he saw her blow up right in front of him after some unknown figure tossed a grenade past him that destroyed the luggage car's connecting link with the rest of the train," he growled through gritted teeth. "As if you didn't already know."

His eyes were already starting to sting, but he refused to let the tears fall. Not here, not now.

" _But Gin, I_ _ **didn't**_ _know!"_ Vermouth protested vehemently. _"All Bourbon told me was that he found Sherry, so he was going to proceed to the plan's next phase and move her into the luggage car so that we could move her safely just in case any unwanted alien visitors had snuck aboard the train. The luggage car was just supposed to be separated, not blown up, but if Bourbon said there was an unknown figure that tossed a grenade at the connecting link, then doesn't that mean he realized something had gone wrong with our plan and was trying to fix it, only to be thwarted by that unknown third party?"_

Gin closed his mouth and frowned. Bourbon had said as much, hadn't he? That he saw the explosives in the luggage car and was trying to get Sherry out when the grenade came through?

" _Perhaps the one who's been after Sherry all this time finally succeeded in their goal,"_ Vermouth said coolly and hung up, leaving him feeling drained, powerless, and full of doubt.

"Aniki…?" Vodka said softly and Gin looked back at him with a hollow expression. Vodka was watching him carefully, looking both worried and upset. "Sherry, is she…? Did Vermouth…?" he trailed off, completing neither of his questions.

Gin's breath hitched in his throat and he grit his teeth as his heart clenched painfully, averting his eyes from his partner's face and glaring hatefully down at the ground. "Bourbon saw it… Had a fucking _front row seat_ to her funeral pyre… And _Vermouth_ …" he smashed his fist angrily into the stone pillar behind Vodka, and he hardly felt the pain that came with it. "… I don't know if she had a hand in this or not anymore… Bourbon thinks she did it, but Vermouth says it might have been the alien after Sherry and her suggestion corroborates with what Bourbon described, so she could have been telling the truth for once, but she's so _damn_ good at _lying_ that I don't even know if I _can_ believe her."

It didn't even _matter_ anymore to him who was responsible, whether it was Vermouth or Pandora, because it wouldn't change the fact that Sherry was still dead. She was gone, just like her sister… He'd failed her and he'd failed Akemi in his oath to protect her… It was taking literally everything he had not to completely lose it on this public train platform full of strangers that wouldn't - couldn't - _ever_ understand the unbearable agony he was going through.

"Vodka… get me out of here…" he said shakily. Even his normal speaking cadence was off-kilter.

"Right away, Aniki," Vodka said immediately and placed one hand on his shoulder to keep him grounded as he started to lead him out of the busy station back to where the car was parked.

They had just left the station when Gin's phone rang again. He pulled it out of his coat pocket automatically and his green eyes suddenly blazed with fury.

He answered it and his voice was downright feral in its ferocity as he snarled, "What the hell do you want now, you two-faced lying bitch!"

" _Calm yourself, Gin, I call to bring you good news, so try to be a little grateful for my efforts,"_ Vermouth said smoothly, unphased by his temper.

" _Nothing_ you have to say is _ever_ good news!" she shot back.

" _Oh, not even that I found your sweetheart still alive?"_

Gin froze all over again, just as he had when Bourbon had told him Sherry had been in the luggage car when it blew up. His eyes narrowed into dark slits and he breathed shakily in a deadly soft whisper, "Don't you _dare_ try to screw around with me right now, Vermouth, or I _swear_ I will-!"

" _-No jokes, Gin,"_ she said seriously. _"She's alive and still small, but asleep and being carried by the Professor she's living with, and she's surrounded by all of her little friends who are relieved that she was found. I don't know who blew up in front of Bourbon, but it wasn't Sherry and it seems that her secret is still safe from the 'Black Organization'. You're a lucky man, Gin."_ She hung up without waiting for his input either way.

Gin couldn't take anymore. His knees buckled beneath him and the only reason he didn't fully collapse to the ground was because Vodka quickly caught him around the waist and threw one of his arms around his shoulders.

"Aniki! Aniki, what happened? Who called just now? What did they say?" he demanded frantically, but Gin just smiled giddily.

"She's alive…" he breathed, feeling lightheaded with overwhelming relief. "My Sherry's alive… She's still alive…"

An amazed smile broke out over Vodka's face as well. "Oh god, Aniki, that's wonderful!"

"I know…" Gin sighed happily, still feeling like he was about to pass out any second. "Can you drive? I don't think I can right now."

"Yes, absolutely, Aniki," Vodka said enthusiastically and half-carried him the rest of the way to the Porsche because Gin's legs still didn't seem to want to hold him up right now.

Once Vodka had opened the passenger's side door, Gin was able to use the frame to support himself enough to climb in and he collapsed into the leather seat with a relieved moan. Sherry was alive… She was alive, and he hadn't broken his promise to either her or Akemi… Kudo had probably figured out something was off, or maybe just discovered Vermouth on the train and acted accordingly to protect her when he had been unable to. Gin was immensely grateful to him. If there was any way he could ever return the favor without compromising his job's true nature, he would gladly do so. He still wished he could have seen her again, but he would much rather her be alive than dead, so he would just have to be content with that. However, there was one more thing he had left to take care of…

"Vodka, text Bourbon that Sherry's still alive and that the girl he saw blow up wasn't really her, but probably a stunt double," Gin said tiredly.

()()()()()

With the chaos of seeing the luggage car explode with Sherry in it, calling Gin to let him know what happened, trying to track down Vermouth, and then getting the text from Vodka that Vermouth had found Sherry alive while the one he had seen was a fake, Bourbon completely forgot about the single green eye he glimpsed from the crack in the doorway until he saw Masumi Sera on the train platform with those exact color eyes. That unique green eye could only belong to one person, but that was impossible… unless his original hunch was not wrong…

"Regarding the detailed files from around the time of Akai's death, can I see them one more time?" Bourbon murmured under his breath to Vermouth as she walked past him, his gaze still fixed on Akai's little sister.

"Sure," she said shortly and kept walking on ahead as if they were total strangers to each other.

Good. It seemed as though he would have to restart _that_ investigation from the very beginning. He would continue to carryout Gin's assignment on Pandora, of course, but he had hit plenty of dead ends with that mission already. Nobody could really fault him for tackling a little inconsequential side project during those low points, now could they?

* * *

 _The Boss and Rum has finally officially appeared in my story! As of this point in time, Rum has no confirmed canon identity, so I decided to make one up for him instead of picking one of the current Rum suspects. I won't change it even if his or her identity is revealed before this story is finished._

 _Yep, I'm having Hyoe Kuroda be Gin's and Curaçao's dad because he's cool, I like him, he's old enough to have twenty-eight-year-old kids, and from the canon standpoint, it would be **hella** ironic if one of the Organization's most loyal and dangerous members was the son of a police officer._

 _I have Akemi friends with Gin and also getting along with Vodka. She was raised by Pisco and if Irish saw him as a father figure, then she probably came into regular contact with him as well. Then there's the canon material that has Akemi knowing Rei as a kid, then establishing that Rei and Hiromitsu **also** knew each other as kids, so she could have easily befriended both of them too. Then of course she was dating Akai who eventually became Rye... She's very popular friend material apparently._

 _Yes, I lowkey ship Bourbon/Scotch. Next chapter is "Scarlet Showdown"._


	18. Scarlet Showdown

**Author's Note: What's this? The next chapter only a week later? Amazing! Enjoy it while you can though, because the next one won't be out for a long while. Did you know this chapter didn't actually exist in the original outline that I wrote for this story a year ago? Yeah, it was originally going to go straight from 'Raven Mystery Train' to 'Darkest Nightmare'. So glad I didn't end up doing that. This chapter ended up being rather necessary. This chapter spans from the end of episode 706 "Bourbon Figures It Out" to episode 813 "The Shadow Approaching Amuro".**

* * *

Scarlet Showdown

"I managed to return, no problem, and the case was solved thanks to Detective Mouri," Bourbon told Vermouth over the phone while he was driving back home from the…very interesting day he had at the tennis courts.

" _I see, but how long are you planning to stick with that detective?"_ she asked. _"All you've managed to discover since you've been there is an unknown hacker keeping tabs on your movements in the area and Sherry being in a place she shouldn't. Even your interest in the nature of Akai's death has led you nowhere, so why don't you call an end to whatever fruitless assignment Gin gave you?"_

"No, my interest has been piqued more than ever, by the 'Sleeping Sleuth' that is," Bourbon said as his thoughts turned again to the uncanny little boy that the Organization had chosen as its rival and who had done more than his fair share of leading the murder investigation today. "I'll talk to you later when I have something more concrete I need your assistance with."

With that, he hung up on his superior. This had been his first time encountering Conan directly since he'd learned from Vermouth that the Organization was challenging him after the fiasco of the Mystery Train. With this newfound knowledge, he had kept a much closer eye on Conan than he had previously and what he had observed had intrigued him immensely. He wasn't just a smart kid, he seemed to be the actual _brains_ behind the famous detective, the Sleeping Sleuth. He could better understand why the Organization was so interested in him and why managing him was Gin's responsibility.

Given the personal matter he was investigating and that the Organization had rescued Kir from Haido Central Hospital not too far from Beika City where Conan lived, what was the likelihood that Conan knew anything about _that_ situation? Bourbon could never forget when he heard the news that Akai had been killed and Kir had been the one to pull the trigger on Gin's orders. He was first shocked and then in immediate denial. Akai couldn't be dead, not if Kir was supposedly the one who shot him. If it was _Gin_ who'd done the deed, that would be another matter entirely. He showed no remorse or hesitation towards killing. Alien or human, it made no difference to him, but Kir wasn't like that. She was the opposite of Gin and only shot to kill as a last resort, regardless of the identity of her target, and that was why he was certain Kir had not killed Akai.

As he was driving down the highway, he recalled her words to him when he'd confronted her with his hypothesis that Akai had faked his death:

 _Kir gave him a steady, piercing look from over her shoulder. "You're looking for a cheat code where there isn't one, Bourbon," she said flatly. "Once you lose your last life or all of your health, then it's game over. You don't come back. It's true of video games and it's true of life."_

 _Then she turned on her heel and left him in the dust without another parting word or a backwards glance. He ground his teeth in frustration, his body already moving to chase after her and_ _ **demand**_ _she tell him what she knew, when he stopped and paused. His brain finally caught up with his ears, thinking over her words carefully. After several moments, a small smirk creased his lips and his blue eyes watched the distance between them increase._

" _No, you don't come back from_ _ **that**_ _game…" he murmured in agreement. "… but when it_ _ **ends**_ _, then you can immediately start over with a_ _ **new**_ _game and_ _ **all**_ _your lives with full health."_

That brief confrontation with Kir had only solidified the idea in his mind that she had conspired with Akai to fake his death, though he knew he'd never be able to get any further information out of her. If even being thoroughly tortured for hours by an alien that had killed and taken on her father's guise had not broken her spirit when she was twenty-three and fairly new to both the CIA _and_ MiB, then nothing _he_ could say or do four years later with that many more years of experience under her belt would _ever_ cause her to part with the information unwillingly. Still, it had been the biggest driving factor behind his decision to disguise as Akai with a burn scar on his face and appear before his colleagues to judge their reactions. Gin giving him the Pandora investigation assignment in the Beika City area had given him the perfect pretext to carry out that test. Starting with the FBI had yielded a negative result, but if he started with _Conan_ this time around, what answers might he come up with?

()()()()()

"That's it!" Haibara exclaimed to herself in the lab, both impressed and excited by her own discovery.

After months and _months_ of attempting to make an antidote for APTX-4869 after discovering the growth effects of baijiu whilst sick, she _finally_ had another breakthrough! She'd been tackling this problem all wrong from the very beginning. Just as ibuprofen could lower a fever caused by a bacterial infectious agent, but an antibiotic would actually kill the pathogen in question, all of her antidotes thus far had been formulated to reverse the symptomatic effects of the drug without treating the root cause. The only reason they even worked was because they were taken when the body was at its most vulnerable and the immune system could not so readily protect the body from the effects of the drug when it was already under attack.

Yet, every time, the effects of the drug wore off and returned her and Kudo to their small size. All drugs wore off over time, so shrinking back to being seven had never been unexpected, but it had suddenly hit her a few days ago that APTX-4869 was _also_ a drug, yet the effects had never worn off. It was as though the drug had permanently changed something in their bodies that would not be affected afterward by the liver's breakdown of the drug in question. She had resumed her problem-solving investigation into the drug with this new epiphany at the forefront of her mind.

And that was how she had reached this point.

APTX-4869 did not just regress the body's cells to a juvenile state; it reprogrammed the body's sense of self to be that of the younger form. The human immune system was only able to function by distinguishing objects in the body as either 'self' or 'not-self', which was the reason why blood types were so important for blood transfusions. The immune system of a person with Type O wouldn't recognize any blood with A or B antigens as 'self' and would attack that blood accordingly.

Instead of just reversing the shrinking effects of APTX-4869, what she really needed to do was focus primarily on reprogramming the body's 'self' identification through the immune system so that it would again recognize the adult body as 'self'. Haibara was amazed. She finally had a good, solid idea of what she needed to do to fix the problem she had created. In effect, the permanent antidote would regrow the body while sick and then overwrite the immune system's current default of child self with the new adult self. No, the body wouldn't need to be sick if she temporarily knocked out the immune system and then the regrowth and 'self' overwriting effects would take place. She wasn't sure if she could make one drug that could do all three things, especially since there was a timing component to it. Either she would have to make two separate drugs, or she and Kudo would have to wait to get sick before the permanent antidote could be used. Hmm, or maybe they wouldn't have to wait since she _did_ still have those capsules that simulated the effects of a cold and even went so far as to activate the immune system.

Well, Haibara supposed she would cross that bridge when she got there. Right now, she had some new chemical formulations to work out for the _real_ antidote.

()()()()()

A little less than a year ago now, famous high school detective Shinichi Kudo was solving cases left and right, and was often called upon by the police to consult on difficult cases. He was known as the Savior of the Police Force and he was a quick-rising star in the news. The more cases he solved, the more his fame grew, and the more challenging the case, the greater his ego grew. He was on fire, unstoppable, and absolutely nothing could tear him down from his pedestal.

That's how the story always starts anyway.

A little less than a year ago now, Shinichi Kudo helped the Tokyo police identify and arrest a murderer who had turned out to be something rather less than human. He was an alien, and not just any alien, but a powerful Quantaban mob boss that the Men in Black had their eyes on for a while. In the interim between the Quantaban being taken into police custody and being snatched from under their noses by the MiB, the mob boss, furious and humiliated that a mere human _boy_ had brought him low, sent out a communiqué from his antennae to the members of his group on Earth. He gave them orders to put out into the galaxy a bounty of 1,000 quantars – the equivalent of roughly 100 million yen or one million US dollars – for the severed head of Shinichi Kudo.

The MiB got wind of the bounty on the young detective's head and Sherry had the perfect temporary solution to save him. While working on a different project, she had accidentally created a drug that deaged the body of the victim who consumed it and yet all the tests she'd done on the youthened mice showed they still retained their adult intellects. The MiB had been keeping a close eye on this rising star detective with the hope that perhaps they could use him and his close relationship with the Tokyo police to recruit new mostly-trained members to their ranks. They were looking to boost their numbers to help contain the fallout from one of the major trade centers on Xanadu being obliterated in the course of the intergalactic war raging amongst the star systems.

Sherry was especially keen on sponsoring the high school detective and recommended her new drug titled APTX-4869 to 'that person' as the solution when she heard of the bounty placed on her champion. Her logic was simple. Shinichi Kudo couldn't be killed if he was already dead. The plan was approved, and the drug was administered successfully without revealing the true reason for the 'murder' attempt. Only a select group of people initially knew the truth of what happened to Shinichi Kudo: 'that person' and Rum, of course, Curaçao as his right-hand, Sherry as the developer of the drug, and Gin and Vodka as the ones who administered it to the detective. As intended, the high school detective disappeared from the public eye practically overnight and there were many rumors that believed he was dead. It was exactly what the MiB wanted everyone, especially the Quantabans, to think.

That was how the story went so far.

A little less than a year later in current time, the original Quantaban mob boss that had posted the bounty on Shinichi Kudo was unexpectedly murdered. The work appeared to be done by that of a professional assassin believed to have been sent by a rival family. The new mob boss that succeeded him reallocated the funds for the bounty on Shinichi Kudo to a _new_ bounty for the assassin that had killed his uncle and predecessor. The bounty on Shinichi Kudo was thus voided and nobody in the galaxy or on Earth was interested in his whereabouts or potential survival anymore. It was now safe for Shinichi Kudo to return to the world once more.

And that was how that story ended. Anticlimactic, unfulfilling, and maybe… just a little _too_ convenient…

()()()()()

"What a surprise. The man you disguised as had his wallet stolen," Vermouth said to the disguised Bourbon sitting next to her in the driver's seat of his car after they had left the park.

"I _did_ find it strange that he didn't have a wallet," Bourbon admitted. "Well, good thing I borrowed those weird five-yen coins he had in his pocket."

"But to go out of your way to return his stolen wallet..." Vermouth said in a light, mocking tone.

"It'd be a problem if he'd made a fuss about it, wouldn't it? It had his debit card and driver's license in it after all," Bourbon pointed out, unphased by her taunting.

"Well, you should be grateful. You know that bug that you slipped into that FBI kitten's sleeve when she grabbed your arm? I got it back for you," she said with a smug grin as she held up the small black rectangular device.

"Thank you, I appreciate it."

She smirked with satisfied pleasure. "Well? Did you get anything interesting from that kitten?" she said as she depressed the inflated bag she'd worn underneath her dress to simulate a pregnant body and ripped off the face mask.

"Yeah, it was quite the harvest," Bourbon said as he ripped off his own and winked at her. "I got to hear a surprising inside story."

"You'll let me hear the outcome of the story once you're finished, won't you?" she asked. She was helping Bourbon because he'd asked her, but she had her own reason for continuing to assist him with the disguises he needed.

"Of course, as soon as I've obtained positive proof of it, but I can already say this much. He's a terrifying man, that boy," Bourbon said with a hard smile on his face.

Vermouth still believed Gin had sent Bourbon to the Beika area to investigate Pandora, but since Gin still hadn't told anyone what he was after, she was more than happy to 'innocently' help Bourbon if it kept him distracted from his original mission. She couldn't be accused of obfuscating his assignment if she didn't know what it was, right? Besides, Bourbon seemed to be doing an excellent job of getting sidetracked by this mysterious, personal pursuit all on his own without her prodding.

()()()()()

Bourbon was so frustrated and angry, he was hardly aware of his surroundings. His body was moving on autopilot to take him back home and his mind kept repeating Akai's words back to him: _I still feel bad about what happened to him._

Damn him, damn him, _damn_ him! He was right all along; Akai _was_ alive and he couldn't do a _damn_ thing about it! He jammed the key to his apartment into the door and slammed it open only for his nose to be assaulted by a familiar, noxious burning smell.

He coughed and shouted, "Who's here?!"

Bourbon flicked on the front light and a black-clothed figure immediately leapt into his vision from among the lighter colors of his foyer. It was Gin, smoking and glaring at him through his long bangs.

"Gin! What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Bourbon demanded furiously. "This is breaking and entering!"

"I could ask you the very same thing, Bourbon," Gin said icily as he took the cigarette from between his lips and purposefully extinguished it on the dark wood of the coffee table, leaving an even darker burn mark. "Priority Alpha-1. Does that mean _nothing_ to you?"

Bourbon stilled. Shit. He'd gotten so caught up in finally having active, working leads to investigate Akai's fate that he'd completely forgotten about Pandora.

He gave an unassuming shrug, trying to downplay it. "You didn't exactly give me much information to work with, so if progress is slow, I can hardly be blamed for that."

"No, but you _can_ be blamed for wasting precious time investigating a dead man," Gin growled as he stood up from the couch with his hands shoved into his pockets, and his tall, intimidating presence dominated the room. "I warned you the last time I caught you chasing ghosts, Bourbon. I _warned_ you that I'd make you regret it if you got distracted by your blind vengeance and pursued the wrong prey."

The words weren't exact, but they were close enough to what he'd heard from Akai already this evening, that he bared his teeth and snapped back, "He sure was pretty damned solid for being a _ghost_."

Gin released a harsh bark of laughter. "Do you think that's _news_ to me? Kir told me about the plan Shuichi Akai and Conan Edogawa created to fake Akai's death as soon as we rescued her from the FBI, and I allowed it to proceed just as they planned because it suited me. However good you feel about uncovering the survival of your hated rival, you have accomplished _nothing_ these past several weeks and I do _not_ tolerate blatant insubordination lightly."

Gin was left-handed and with his hands in his pockets, Bourbon half-expected him to draw out the Beretta and shoot him in a probably non-fatal area. He tensed to move out of the line of fire, preparing for a side-step. He was completely caught off-guard by his _right_ hand coming out instead and holding an odd gun-like weapon. Gin fired, but there was no explosive bang and something struck him forcibly in the arm through his clothes. Bourbon instinctively grabbed at the injury sight and his hand met with a small cylindrical object.

"Hmph, not bad for a right-handed shot," Gin hummed in satisfaction to himself.

Bewildered, Bourbon looked down and saw a red-feathered dart sticking out of his arm. He pulled it out and held it up to his eye level. "A sedative?" he muttered aloud.

"Correct delivery method, wrong chemical," Gin said as he shoved the small tranquilizer gun back into his coat. "It's Mirewoe-71G, a powerful drug originally developed by the ancient Rrqvs of Etabe IX for interrogations of prisoners of war. It has long since gained galactic fame as a chemical torture substance and you may know it by its more common name: Mind Breaker."

Bourbon gasped and the hand still holding the dart began to shake with fear. "Mind Breaker…?" he breathed in horror.

"Don't worry; I used a small concentration, so you won't end up comatose…" Gin said matter-of-factly. "… but you'll spend the next half-hour or so trapped in your own mind reliving your worst memories twisted and exaggerated beyond your own recognition." As he walked past him to the front door, he smiled cruelly and said, "Sweet dreams, _Bourbon_."

()()()()()

Gin was not the only one trespassing into other agents' residences, but Vermouth at least waited until morning. Or more specifically, she waited until the residence in question was deserted while its occupant, the brown-haired CIA agent Kir, had already left for a full day of work. Vermouth quietly broke into the apartment and quickly surveyed it. It was cute in a quaint, frugal sort of way. Kir wasn't a high-ranking codenamed agent, but Vermouth knew she made more than her current living quarters otherwise suggested.

Vermouth wasn't here to critique Kir's living style though; she had a much more important task in mind. She had laughed in Bourbon's face last night when he suggested that Akai was still alive and had done a corpse switch with that of the dead Rikumichi Kusuda host body, but she actually believed him. She wouldn't put it past Gin to keep it secret from everyone that Akai was alive and she had good reason to believe her Silver Bullet had helped plan the deception. It would also make much more sense for Kir to fake a death than cause a real one. The only person, alien or otherwise, that she'd ever murdered was the one who'd tortured her while wearing her father's face, and that was an extremely desperate situation.

If Akai was alive though, then that meant he had to have some kind of contact with Kir, otherwise he would be completely out of the loop on all things Black Organization, and he couldn't very well have _that_ , could he? Vermouth carefully picked her way through the apartment, first looking around the living room and then the kitchen before she entered the bedroom and her turquoise blue eyes alighted upon the object of her search: a phone charging on the night table. Kir had two phones: one as Rena Mizunashi and one as Kir and Hidemi Hondou, and judging by the messages she was reading, this phone was the latter. If there was an emergency, then of course the MiB would reach out to Kir through her Mizunashi cellphone, but otherwise, all messages and calls were sent to this one.

Vermouth scrolled through the woman's Contacts list, mentally checking off the ones she recognized from the MiB, which turned out to be most of them. The other half of her contacts were English names, so were probably her CIA colleagues. There was only one contact that really stood out to her as odd, and it was labeled 'Subaru Okiya'. It definitely wasn't an American name nor anybody that she recognized from the Organization or Kir's only living family member. Odds were good that this Subaru Okiya was the current name that Shuichi Akai was going by. She decided to take a chance and sent a short message to him with only three letters: R-U-M.

Rum: the codename for the Number Two of the entire Organization. Once the message was sent, Vermouth erased the record of it from the phone, feeling confident that nobody would discover what she'd done. Akai wouldn't dare reply back to the message for fear of outing Kir as a NOC, and even if her Cool Guy asked Sherry about Rum, it wasn't an automatic assumption for her to make that the name would have been leaked by Kir.

Now Shinichi would have another weapon with which to wield against the Organization when the time finally came to bring down the Men in Black.

()()()()()

" _Hello, Gin. How's Germany treating you?"_

"Excellent except for the time difference. Curaçao, are you alone right now and is it safe for you to talk?" Gin asked as soon as his sister answered the phone.

" _I am and it is,"_ she said, answering both questions.

"Good. I wanted to check on you and see how things were going on your end of the investigation," Gin said as he turned on the speaker and set it on the ledge of the bathroom sink before picking up the hair dryer.

Curaçao laughed. _"You're only just_ _ **now**_ _asking about that? I expected this call two weeks ago when I heard through the grapevine how mad you were at Bourbon."_

"Anything concrete?" he asked.

" _No, just the normal, active, healthy rumor mill,"_ she answered.

That damn _rumor mill_ was why it was so difficult being in a secret relationship with Sherry and _keeping_ it secret. He supposed it was to be expected that an organization full of agents trained to be suspicious about the smallest of abnormalities would result in people being way too nosy about _other_ people's business, but it sure made things inconvenient at times. Still, rumors didn't start from nothing; they needed a spark first and then kindling to continue burning.

"Based on what?" he inquired.

" _Bourbon's been quite polite and deferential towards you lately, hasn't he?"_

Gin snorted. "That's it?"

" _Yep. Given your reputation, the most popular rumor is that you threatened or otherwise did something to Bourbon which is why he's tiptoeing around you, but there's another one that suggests the sexual tension between you two finally exploded and- Edward, is that a blow dryer I'm hearing in the background?"_ she said, breaking off her original sentence.

"Yeah, I woke up about an hour ago and just got out of the shower, so I'm drying my hair," he said.

" _Right, it's like 10 AM or something in Germany right now, but are you even dressed yet?!"_ she demanded incredulously.

"I'm wearing a towel."

" _I swear, I have_ _ **no**_ _idea how your brain works sometimes. Who decides as soon as they're done with the shower before they've even finished with the bathroom that that's the perfect time to call their sister?"_ Curaçao said with an exasperated air.

"Well apparently, _I_ do," Gin said dryly.

" _Apparently,"_ Curaçao agreed.

"Your investigation?" he reminded her.

" _No other codenamed agents have been reported to have behaved strangely, but there's quite a large handful of non-codenamed agents that were reported to have done odd out-of-character things over the years. Unfortunately, all of them are dead for various unrelated reasons and none of these odd instances were drastic enough to warrant an in-depth investigation at the time of their deaths,"_ she said.

"And we don't have any liver samples in storage to check, do we?" Gin grumbled.

" _Not anymore, we don't,"_ she said grimly. _"Guess where they were all stored and how far back the most recent one occurred."_

"In the section of the building that lost power due to the blizzard five years ago," he lamented.

" _Bingo."_

Gin swore angrily under his breath. "So we're no better off than where we started. Damn it, I'm gonna kill Bourbon for wasting time!"

" _If Bourbon's being so unreliable, why don't you let_ _ **me**_ _do some intensive investigating into Pandora in his place?"_ Curaçao offered. _"After all,_ _ **I**_ _used to work in Intelligence too before the incident that brought my loyalty into question got me transferred to being Rum's right hand agent."_

Gin frowned and set the hair dryer down, though most of his hair was still wet. "You have a lead?"

" _A hunch…"_ his twin corrected. _"… but I noticed an interesting similarity among the majority of the non-codenamed agents I looked into. More than half of them were NOCs from other intelligence agencies."_

"NOCs…?" he repeated, curious.

" _Yes, NOCs that never had the chance to learn the truth about the Organization being the Men in Black, and it occurred to me: maybe Pandora's not just targeting the MiB. She may be going after_ _ **any**_ _major intelligence agency and the MiBJ is the biggest collection point for the greatest variety of intelligence agencies on the planet. Scotch was a NOC for the Secret Police of the PSB, and you've mentioned before that the reason you knew Akemi had been impersonated was because of the text 'she' sent to Akai. If that alien was working for Pandora like you believe, then maybe that text was sent to try and get to Akai_ _ **because**_ _he's FBI."_

Gin's eyes had slowly been widening with every word Curaçao spoke and he said, "The Hondous… Mr. Hondou was CIA as is Kir currently, and he was killed while his daughter was tortured for information… Rum was the one who recognized the MO of Ethan Hondou's murder as the same as Tsutomu Akai's from seventeen years ago and presumed that the killer of both was the same individual."

" _According to Rum, he had gone to meet Mr. Akai that day to see about inducting him into the MiB as the FBI liaison, much as his son was supposed to become for us a couple years ago. You don't think the FBI/CIA liaison connection between the two fathers is coincidence, do you?"_ Curaçao added knowingly.

"I don't believe in coincidence," Gin agreed.

" _If Pandora really is after just_ _ **any**_ _intelligence agency and is using the MiB as an open hunting ground to scout out her prey, then perhaps it would be best if we turn the investigation on its head and search_ _ **outward**_ _instead of_ _ **inward**_ _,"_ she suggested.

Gin shook his head violently. "No, absolutely not. I refuse to have our network of intelligence liaisons investigate this. That's _way_ too many people to reveal the secret that we believe the MiB may be compromised."

Curaçao clicked her tongue in disapproval over the phone. _"You're thinking too small, Gin. All we need are the records of any autopsies that investigated the liver and found an unidentifiable chemical in small doses."_

"All we need?!" Gin spluttered, then demanded sarcastically, "And where are you going to find this magnificent database of autopsy records of every major intelligence agent on the planet?"

" _Why the NPA Headquarters in Tokyo, of course,"_ she said simply. _"They have it, and Bourbon works for the Public Security Bureau of the NPA as one of the Secret Police like Scotch, so we have ready access to the building's inner sanctum."_

Gin's green eyes narrowed in irritation. "After the way Bourbon's been behaving lately, I don't want to entrust him with even _more_ information, especially since Vermouth is his direct supervisor and I definitely don't want _her_ knowing."

Curaçao chuckled over the phone and he raised one eyebrow questioningly. He hadn't said anything funny, so why the laughter?

" _You know, Edward, asking Bourbon isn't the_ _ **only**_ _way of retrieving the information from that place…"_ she said and he knew she would be smirking at him if he were standing before her.

"Emma, what are you…?" he began warily.

Curaçao didn't even wait for him to finish. _"-I can steal it easily. I have the skills to break in and get out all on my own and my brain's unique memorization ability is the prefect storage mechanism for the data without fussing over technological impediments or worrying about corrupted data. Also, this way if it's me doing the work, we don't have to worry about telling anyone else about our suspicions of infiltration."_

She had a point. Several points in fact and he liked the idea of continuing to rely on only one person, especially when that person was his younger twin. Even if something happened and she was discovered, Curaçao was a formidable one-woman army that could break out and escape without trouble. She _was_ the best person for the job. Yet for some reason, he still felt uneasy. Was it just because she was his little sister? He was supposed to worry; that was what big brothers did, no matter how talented or capable their younger siblings were.

"Alright, you can do it," he consented and then smirked slightly. "It's not like I could stop you even if I _wasn't_ on the other side of the world right now."

Curaçao laughed heartily and sighed in amusement after a while. _"Oh, that's cute, Gin; you thinking I need your permission. I was planning on infiltrating the NPA whether you gave me permission or not. I'll probably do it tonight, so I can get it out of the way before I'm no longer capable."_

"No longer capa- Emma, what do you mean by that?" Gin demanded, alarmed by her word choice.

" _Calm down, Gin, it's nothing serious or life-threatening… Actually it_ _ **is**_ _serious and I guess it_ _ **could**_ _be considered life-threatening if things go wrong-"_

"Emma, what the hell happened?!" he shouted directly into the phone still on speaker, his heart rate picking up speed and his irises shrinking to tiny pinpricks of fear at the thought of something bad happening to his twin.

" _I told you to calm down already; it's nothing bad,"_ Curaçao scolded with unflappable calm. _"It's just that this is going to have to be my last dangerous field assignment for a while since I'll be assigned to desk duty soon."_

She might as well have spoken a foreign language. Curaçao didn't mind doing office work, but she _hated_ being stuck behind a desk _full-time_ , and that's why she worked so well as Rum's right-hand agent. "Why?!"

" _Nothing much. My birth control just failed me last week, sooo… congratulations, Gin! It looks like you're going to be an uncle in about nine months,"_ she said casually and hung up.

Gin stood in front of the bathroom sink staring blankly at his stunned reflection in the mirror while he held his phone, speechless with shock.

Birth control… uncle… nine months… _baby?!_

That finally shook him out of his stupor and his expression contorted with rage as he turned off the speaker phone and furiously dialed the number of the one responsible for this. Rum had barely answered the phone when Gin yelled straight into his ear, "RUM, YOU'RE DEAD!"

" _Yow! The fuck- what the hell did I do this time?!"_ Rum protested irately.

"Knocked up my sister, that's _what!_ " Gin snarled back.

Dead silence met his pronouncement on the other end until he finally heard a quiet, awed, _"Oh…! I did? I mean, she's-?"_

"-Don't you 'Oh!' me! Take responsibility, you fucking pirate bastard!" Gin shouted.

 _"Again with the-! Missing an eye does not automatically make me a pirate!"_

"No, but it's still a perfect moniker for a robber bedmate!" Gin retorted angrily. He didn't care if he was in Germany while Rum was still safe from immediate bodily harm in Japan, he was _not_ letting Rum off the hook for this!

()()()()()

Curaçao smirked as she hung up on her big brother and put the phone away. "Sorry, Taichi…" she murmured happily to herself, using Rum's first name. "… but big brother's going to try and kill you anyway, so I had to tell him while he was out of the country."

Did she have to leave Rum in the dark about her pregnancy before telling her brother first? No, but it was more fun that way. Since Gin wouldn't actually kill Rum without sufficient reason – and she was sure pregnancy didn't count, no matter how furious he would be at Rum – she had to give him other opportunities to vent his hostile feelings at her lover. See? She was a good sister looking out for her brother.

Rum had still been in his office when she had left him for the day, so he was probably still up there and being berated right this moment by her highly-paranoid, overprotective twin who would be more than happy to rip him a new one if he wasn't stuck in Berlin. He was working with Riesling to determine the suitability of a fellow BND agent for potential recruitment into the MiB. Curaçao, on the other hand, was nearly at her car in the parking garage and already mentally planning for the infiltration of the NPA Headquarters she was going to do tonight. Very few agents could plan and implement such an activity in less than twenty-four hours, much less do it all in one night, but well… she was talented, experienced, and possessed a spectacular memory, so she was confident.

Curaçao never saw it coming.

Something sharp struck her in the neck and she gasped, quickly ripping it out, but whatever she'd been hit with was already starting to take effect. It felt as though something had kicked her hard in the chest and she leaned against her car, breathless and trying desperately to shake it off. Her first response would have been to shoot out the injection site to eject the chemical from her bloodstream, but she couldn't do that this time without killing herself. She hadn't heard anything, not a single suspicious sound, and who… who _could_ have shot her? She was still in the MiB parking garage and nobody but other MiB agents could… Curaçao fought to turn around to find the person- the traitor who'd shot her, but her body was resisting and becoming unresponsive. She put everything she had into fighting her own body for control and _willed_ her neck muscles to twist around. It was a monumental effort and she struggled for every inch even as she felt her conscious mind growing more and more distant. She managed to get one brief glance over her shoulder and her eyes widened in shock at the approaching figure.

"You…!" she uttered, her last consciously-chosen word before she was imprisoned in her own mind, violently hurled into the background, perfectly aware of what was happening around her, but unable to act or respond. It was as if she was now watching a movie of somebody else's life.

The figure came out of the shadows and the evening moonlight illuminated the long blond tresses and tall, voluptuous form of Vermouth.

"Sorry, Curaçao," she said with a somber expression that lacked feeling as she reached up and caressed her cheek with the back of her hand.

Curaçao didn't respond at all and only stared blankly at the older woman. Vermouth's hand slid down her cheek and caught her chin with her fingers, forcing her mismatched blue eyes to look into Vermouth's turquoise ones. It was an unnecessary gesture. If Vermouth had simply told her to look at her, she would have done so. She would do anything she was told right now.

"I _do_ still like you, despite you being _his_ precious little sister, but I have plans and I can't let you or Gin interfere with them, so now you have to work for me again. I'm afraid I only heard part of the conversation you were having with brother dearest, but you told him you were going to break into the NPA Headquarters tonight, didn't you? Why don't you tell me more about why you were going to do such a thing and what information it is you're seeking that you can't just ask Bourbon for it? Oh…" she smiled slyly in the manner of a mongoose that's stumbled upon a secret treasure trove of bird eggs to feast upon. "… and congratulations on the baby, by the way."

* * *

 _Cliffhanger! Might be my first one of this story. The next chapter is 'Darkest Nightmare' which I have been DYING to get to since I first started planning out this story as a full-length novel thing! I'm super excited to write it, but it probably won't even be done next month. I'm expecting **maybe** April will be the soonest it's ready, but definitely don't count on that._

 _Yes, I'm calling Kogoro by his English dub moniker 'Sleeping Sleuth' rather than 'Sleeping Kogoro'. I personally think the former sounds better._


	19. Darkest Nightmare: Part 1

**Author's Note: Guess what guys! I was right! I knew the "Darkest Nightmare" chapter would be longer than "Black Impact". I just didn't realize that even the _first part_ of the "Darkest Nightmare" chapters would be longer than "Black Impact". Yes, this part of the story is so long that I had to break "Darkest Nightmare" into two parts, so here's the first part. I'm only a month late on my presumed deadline, but in all fairness, I did quit my previous job, move across the country, find a new place to live, and start a new job within the past month, so I think I can be forgiven for my tardiness. I have no idea when the second part will be ready, but it will definitely be _heavy_. Enjoy!**

* * *

Darkest Nightmare: Part 1

It was late at night, but not quite midnight at the National Police Agency Headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. Deep within the building on one of the upper floors, a woman wearing a black suit jacket and skirt with short black hair and equally black eyes was at a wall-high computer console with the content on the screens flashing by at an alarming rate. Familiar names and faces leapt out at the woman: Stout, Riesling, Aquavit, Rye, Kir, Bourbon, and a few others, but she didn't stop her actions until she had seen the entire NOC list. Only then did she pull out from her handbag a palette of five transparently-colored cards: red, blue, white, orange, and green from left to right. She spread them wide like a fan and took a deep breath, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, her black eyes fixed on those colors and just like that, the information from the list she'd only _glanced_ at was immediately and completely stored into her permanent long-term memory.

Then the lights flicked on.

The woman startled and whirled around. At the door was a man in a green suit with short, dark brown hair and oval glasses.

"That's enough," he said and two other suited men came in from behind with guns pointed at her. "Move away from the console and put your hands up!" he demanded.

The woman did so, her eyes watchful of the three men now in the room with her.

The man with the glasses left the doorway to stand between and behind his two subordinates, and he smirked, saying, "Your actions are very predictable."

She smiled dangerously, not listening to his words at all and only caring about his placement in the room. Nobody was guarding the exit. She moved, dashing straight through the center of the armed men and karate chopped one in the back of the neck while she smashed the other in the chin with a flat-palmed jab. Both fell to the ground and she spun in tight turns towards the man with the glasses, her momentum bringing her elbow swinging straight for his face. His left hand came up and caught the brunt of her force, but it was still enough to knock him off-balance and send him stumbling into the metal frame of a glass window. The woman leapt away straight for the open door and dashed down the dark hallway at a full run. She could see the natural evening light shining through the large floor-to-ceiling windows at the end of the corridor, and there was someone else waiting for her there as well. It was a face she knew: the dark-skinned, bleached-blond-haired PSB liaison for the Men in Black, Rei Furuya, codename Bourbon.

There was no hesitation in her movements as she launched herself at him in a flying kick that aimed for his head. Bourbon dodged to the left, avoiding her dangerous heels, and threw a punch with his left fist then swung a kick with his right leg. The woman ducked both, falling to her left side and catapulting her right leg up into the air towards his head with the intent of knocking him to the ground. He managed to block the attack and pushed back, but she used the momentum to instead cartwheel backwards into the air towards the windows and away from Bourbon. She grabbed her hair, a wig, and tossed it aside, revealing her long silver tresses that were pulled back into a ponytail. Bourbon barely registered the wig or her true hair color as he lunged forward to close the distance while the woman tried to back away and he punched first with his left fist, then his right. His first punch was too far and missed, but his second struck true. His fist smashed into the wrist that she'd hastily thrown up to block the attack, but the force of the blow still carried through her arm and hit her face. She gasped in pain and the colored contact covering her left eye fell out as she stumbled backward.

"Mr. Furuya, are you alright?" the man with the glasses from earlier said as he came running down the corridor to where Bourbon and the silver-haired woman were fighting.

"Yeah," Bourbon said, and his blue eyes focused on the laughing woman before him who, now that the wig was gone and he had a moment to think, he recognized much to his shock.

There were only two people in the entire Organization that had that distinctive hair color, and one of them was Gin. The other was this woman, his younger twin sister and Rum's confidante: Curaçao.

"No way! It can't be!" he exclaimed with wide eyes. What was Curaçao doing sneaking into the NPA Headquarters when he _worked_ here and why was she stealing the global NOC list?

"Mr. Furuya, stand aside!" Kazami shouted and Bourbon slid to the left while the other man brought his gun to bear on Curaçao. "Don't move!" he ordered her.

Curaçao gave the pair of them a condescending smirk, very much like her brother's, then spun on her heel and ran straight for the windows. She was going to jump out!

"Wait!" Bourbon yelled and ran to stop her, but he was too far and too late. Curaçao crashed straight through the glass window, smirking back over her shoulder at her opponents.

The expression that Curaçao wore on her face right then was not at all what she was feeling on the inside. In fact, she was downright terrified for the week-old fetus she was now carrying that her body didn't seem to care about one way or another. It didn't, because Curaçao was currently enslaved by a powerful alien mind control serum that was forcing her to act and speak against her will, but she was completely conscious of all of it. Conscious and powerless to stop it, but that didn't stop her from trying. Curaçao had been fighting to regain control of her body from the moment she was forced to tell Vermouth of the discussion she had with Gin on the phone – along with everything she knew about Pandora, the mind control serum, and all of Gin's suspicions – and then received new orders to continue her infiltration of the NPA but to instead steal the global NOC list and return to her afterward.

All of her attempts so far had been in vain, but the fear of one of those glass shards piercing her abdomen and killing the newly-created life within her caused her to redouble her efforts, even as her body hijacked a car and drove it straight into oncoming traffic through a busy intersection towards the highway bridges. Trying to reclaim her body previously had left her mentally exhausted and with no success, so Curaçao tried something different this time. She saw a familiar white Mazda RX-7 in her side mirrors, Bourbon's car, and she had an epiphany. She focused on the memory of Bourbon's shocked face when he realized who she was and what she'd done. Yes, he'd let Rum know, and that was she needed. She needed to get a message out to Rum: something nonsensical that would alert him something was wrong with her. Curaçao strained and forced her will down into only trying to move her left arm. It was like pressing up against a stuck door.

Then something gave and suddenly her left arm was all her own again! Not wasting time marveling her good fortune, Curaçao quickly withdrew her smartphone from an inside chest pocket of her jacket and started typing out a message to Rum that read: _The NOCs are Stout, Aquavit, and Riesling, and those you were concerned about, Bourbon and Kir_ -

Her car was slammed into from the back and it snapped her concentration. A quick glance in the mirrors showed Bourbon's car was responsible and Curaçao could already feel the serum starting to take back control of the muscles in her arms. She quickly pressed the 'send' button before she'd finished the message then tossed the phone onto the seat next to her before she sabotaged herself and sent nothing at all, but she clicked her tongue angrily. Bourbon couldn't have waited a few more damned seconds?! Curaçao glanced anxiously down at the phone and only breathed easier once the message was confirmed as 'sent', even as she lost complete control of her body once more. Between Bourbon's future report and her strange text to her lover, Gin would know what had happened to her and would inform Rum accordingly, so they could stop her. Much as her brother hated him, he wouldn't let that get in the way of rescuing her, even if it was from herself.

Curaçao watched from the dark recesses of her own mind as she rammed into other vehicles so hard that she sent them literally _flying_ into the air just to block Bourbon's pursuit and used a falling semi she'd forced into crashing through the outer wall as a jumping block to land on the stretch of highway below. She heard her phone ding from several incoming texts and it even rang, but she couldn't even look to see who they were from, much less answer. It was the serum that caused her to smirk at seeing Bourbon's car stuck up on the taller highway route and it was the serum that caused her to bang her fist against the window and swear angrily at the long line of traffic ahead of her. She reversed her course, going in the opposite direction on the one-way highway and passed Bourbon's car in doing so, weaving in-and-out of the oncoming traffic with expert skill and years of practice, but it didn't stop Curaçao from freaking out in her mind at her own recklessness. Any other time, she wouldn't have minded so much, but she also wasn't in control of her body and it was taking risks she might not have now that she was pregnant!

She was approaching the bridge arches where she had caused the first accident on the highway and saw stopped vehicles up ahead. One was the semi and the other was the red car she'd shoved into it, but ahead of them was another red car parked at a perpendicular angle to the road and behind the vehicle with a sniper rifle resting on the hood was…

"Rye!" she gasped, her body and her mental voice for once in unison. Akai was still alive? Then Kir hadn't killed him but instead helped Akai fake his own death with her brother's blessing. She smirked darkly, her body no longer in line with her mental thoughts. "Interesting! I'll run you over!" she said and sped up.

No! No crashing and running him over and risking her baby's life!

For a moment, Curaçao thought she had regained partial control over her body again when she leaned sideways out of sight from the window and Akai's sniper rifle, but no. Her desire to get out of the line of fire just happened to be in line with Vermouth's wishes. Her body couldn't care less about her _baby's_ survival right now, but _she_ still needed to be alive with her brain intact for Vermouth to use the information she'd stolen on her behalf. She heard the crack of rifle fire and an explosive pop, then metallic screeching and felt the car shudder unevenly. Akai had shot out the right front tire. Curaçao quickly righted her position and it took everything she had to keep the car under any semblance of control. She narrowly missed Akai's car but crashed the front end hard into the barrier, ricocheting backward. The front window shattered and flames sprang to life from beneath the hood. The car struck the highway barrier in the rear, but she still kept spinning until at last, the car crashed and stopped next to the gas tanker facing backwards with the back half hanging off the road.

There was an ominous metallic groan and the whole world seemed to start tilting. The car she was in was falling backwards off the bridge along with the crashed red car and oil tanker. She had to get out! Curaçao grabbed her phone off the seat next to her just as the car was knocked sideways by the other falling vehicles and was sent plummeting front end first. She threw the driver's side door all the way open and climbed out onto it, holding on to the frame long enough to steady herself before jumping as far away from the vehicles as she could. She managed to land in the cold saltwater below on the _opposite_ side of a dockside warehouse from where the three crashed vehicles fell.

She _felt_ the explosion from the oil tanker blast through the water column, and even on her side of the dock, debris still came falling into the water from above her. Curaçao tried her best to dodge them, but there were too many falling too fast and at odd angles. She wasn't fast enough for one of them and it hit her heavily in the head. Her vision swam and blackened momentarily, long enough for the debris to push her downward a meter or so before she came to and pushed herself out of its trajectory. Curaçao fought off her disorientation to regain that lost height and also get out of the water as quick as possible before the next thing that fell on her actually killed her.

She swam vaguely in the direction of land and when her hands met rough concrete, she crawled out of the water and unsteadily managed to pull herself to her feet. She didn't know where she was, and looking down at her phone, she saw the screen was completely smashed so she couldn't call for help, even if she was able. Curaçao wanted to stop. She'd been hit in the head, it was bleeding, and she was dizzy. She shouldn't be moving around like this after sustaining a head injury, but her body _wouldn't_ stop. She'd been given orders: steal the NOC list and return to Vermouth. She'd done the one and now her body was determined to ensure she completed the other, regardless of its condition as long as it wasn't dead. She stumbled sideways into the wall and shivered, moving to remove her black jacket. It was soaked, as was the rest of her, and she didn't have anything dry to change into, but continuing to wear it wouldn't help at all. She hardly even noticed the windshield glass shards falling out of it onto the ground as she continued walking unsteadily.

Curaçao turned around a corner, and bright multi-colored lights suddenly filled her vision, nearly blinding her. She squinted directly at them to try and determine their source when she felt a sharp, painful twinge – like a pinched nerve deep in the center of her brain – that brought her to her knees. Agonized whimpers escaped her clenched teeth as she pressed her hands hard against her head, unable to reach the place inside her skull that was causing her so much pain, and it was mounting! It was like something inside her brain that wasn't supposed to bend was now being twisted out of place and if it didn't stop, it was going to break! The pressure and the pain both kept building while Curaçao remained curled forward with her hands on her head until…

 _Snap!_

Curaçao screamed.

()()()()()

"Damn it, Emma, why aren't you answering?" Rum hissed frantically through his teeth as he tried dialing her number _again_ and brought his cellphone to his ear, thinking of the weird text she'd sent him:

 _The NOCs are Stout, Aquavit, and Riesling, and those you were concerned about, Bourbon and Kir_ -

Why had she sent that to him and what did it even _mean_? All of those agents were former NOCs turned into liaisons for their respective agencies, and he wasn't concerned about either Bourbon or Kir. As soon as he'd seen the message, he'd tried texting her back to ask her to explain, even jokingly asking if she was drunk (he'd hoped she didn't answer 'yes' to that one because she was pregnant now and alcohol was bad for the baby), but he'd gotten no reply back at all. He'd even tried calling her, and her phone rang, but all of his calls went to voicemail.

This time, Curaçao's phone didn't even ring and Rum's heart stopped. She wasn't answering and now her phone was off… or destroyed…! He had no way of reaching her!

His phone was still next to his ear when it started ringing and he gave a surprised shout, nearly dropping his phone in the process. He quickly caught it before it hit the floor and for one brief, _painful_ moment of hope, Rum thought it was Curaçao finally calling him back, but that tiny hope was crushed to dust and scattered on the wind when he saw from the Caller ID that it was only Bourbon.

Sighing heavily, Rum answered it and snapped, "What do you want, Bourbon? I've been trying to get a hold of Curaçao for the past maybe fifteen minutes and now her phone's either off or damaged, so unless this is an emergency, I'm sure whatever you have to say can wait or be sent to me via text."

" _Actually, Curaçao is the reason why I'm calling you, sir,"_ Bourbon said. _"Just now, Curaçao broke into the NPA Headquarters where I was working this evening, stole the international NOC list, and fled the building. I chased after her down the highways and her reckless driving caused massive structural damage and many injuries. I have no clue yet if there were any casualties, but she was really trying to lose me in the chase. I have every reason to believe she encountered Akai who was also involved in the chase to stop her, but I've been unable to find any trace of either her or the car she stole after an oil tanker fell off the bridge into the water and exploded. Was her forceful acquisition of the NOC list an authorized mission objective?"_

Rum barely heard Bourbon's words after 'an oil tanker exploded'. Curaçao was missing. Curaçao's phone wasn't connecting, she was missing, _and_ _an oil tanker had exploded!_ No, he refused to believe she was dead! She couldn't be! Not now! Not the very same night he'd learned she was carrying his child!

"No, I never told her to retrieve the NOC list…" Rum answered, belatedly realizing Bourbon had asked him a question, but his mind was racing.

Curaçao had talked with her brother sometime after she'd left the office for the night. Had Gin told her to do it? If he had, then what purpose would it serve? What in the world had the two silvery-blonde twins discussed apart from her pregnancy?

"Find her," Rum said stiffly, his voice dark and ringing with authority. "Get in contact with Vermouth and tell her my orders are to find and retrieve Curaçao immediately. Have her assign everyone that can be spared to search for Curaçao. Time is money and I will allow _no one_ to rest until she's found and back safe."

" _I can certainly relay your orders, sir, but what are you going to do that you can't spare the few seconds yourself?"_ Bourbon inquired.

"There's a certain _brother_ of hers I have to interrogate in regards to their most recent conversation if I'm to have any chance of understanding what the hell is going on. Don't delay, Bourbon," Rum warned and hung up on the PSB liaison, then dialed Gin's number.

When the phone finally stopped ringing, Gin's voice answered with a sour, _"What now? Isn't it nearly midnight over there in Japan at the moment?"_

Rum's brown eyes narrowed. "It is, and I want to know _exactly_ what you and Curaçao discussed over the phone, because about fifteen to twenty minutes ago, I received a very strange text from her saying 'The NOCs are Stout, Aquavit, and Riesling, and those you were concerned about, Bourbon and Kir-'. Not only that, but Bourbon just called to tell me your twin broke into the NPA Headquarters and stole their international NOC list, then ended up in a car chase on the highway and is now _missing!_ "

()()()()()

Gin's ire at talking to Rum for a second time in less than twenty-four hours vanished in an instant and his blood ran cold. "What! Emma's missing?!"

His twin-! His little sister was missing, but how?! It hadn't even been eight hours since he'd spoken with her!

" _That's right, and her phone's not working anymore either, so you'd better start talking right now, Kuroda! You can start by explaining your sister's bizarre text to me,"_ Rum snapped furiously, the usually even-tempered man's calm demeanor completely vanished in the face of his lover's disappearance.

Except that Gin didn't understand the text either. It rather sounded like she'd been talking as a Black Organization operative, but why had she done that and then sent the text to Rum of all people? There was no reason for it! Then there was the content of the message itself. The 'NOCs' she'd listed off were Stout, Aquavit, Riesling, Bourbon, and Kir, but they weren't the only liaisons that worked for the MiB and she knew that, so _why_? It was like Curaçao was trying to be intentionally cryptic and confusing. Just then, a horrible feeling of dread welled up inside him and his breath hitched in his throat. Pandora had gotten to her!

" _Oi, Gin! Are you going to answer me or what?!"_ Rum demanded.

Gin swallowed heavily. He was and, with his sister in jeopardy, he had no choice but to come clean now.

"I think… that Curaçao is now under the sway of a powerful mind control serum," Gin said reluctantly.

There was a beat of silence on the other end and then Rum said, _"… What the_ _ **hell**_ _are you talking about, Gin?"_

Gin started from the beginning. "Back in July around the time we finally captured Ringore, Sherry was kidnapped by a family unit of Rainbow Dazzleflies under the orders of a being they called Pandora. I first heard the name from Chisenvaal near the end of last year and heard it again from Rikumichi Kusuda before I sent him and the rest of the Cephosanguines to the hospitals to find Kir. Pandora is some kind of shapeshifter-type alien able to perfectly mimic a person's likeness, and I have every reason to believe she's the alien responsible for Akemi's murder and is the one who's after Sherry too. Sherry found this mind control drug in the autopsy she did on one of the dead dazzleflies and I found evidence that suggests Scotch, Calvados, and Irish were all affected by older versions of the very same drug."

He paused in his account for a moment as he sat down on the hotel bed and glanced at the clock as he ran a hand through his bangs. It was nearly 4 pm over here in Berlin, and Riesling had said she would pick him and Vodka up around 4:30 to take them out to dinner. Speaking of which, Vodka should have been back by now. His partner had decided to go exploring the city a bit this afternoon and had _sworn_ up and down to Gin that he wouldn't get lost, despite not knowing the language at all. If he was lost, he would have called, but it was much more likely something had distracted him and he'd forgotten the time. Gin would have to call him next after he was done with Rum.

He continued, "I've suspected ever since then that if Pandora got close enough to three codenamed agents to successfully administer her mind control serum, then there might be others in the Organization under her control and the MiB might be internally compromised. I enlisted Curaçao's assistance with the internal investigation and she discovered many more instances of odd behaviors in agents in the past, but all of them were NOCs that never made it to liaison status and we had no viable liver samples to test for the drug. That was why Curaçao volunteered to break into the NPA Headquarters last night. We didn't want to tell anyone what kind of information we were after in case word got back to Pandora somehow, but she was only supposed to obtain the autopsy reports of all the dead detected intelligence agents for signs of the drug in their livers. She wasn't supposed to steal the entire NOC list itself."

()()()()()

Rum… could _not_ believe what he was hearing coming out of Gin's mouth right now and he was _furious!_ Gin had suspected – for months! – the MiB to be internally compromised by agents under a mind control drug and had said _nothing_ about it to him or even Lord Karasuma! Only his twin had been privy to his innermost thoughts and Rum could understand the logic of secrecy to a certain extent, but this went too far!

Worse still, it was not the first time the Kuroda twins had kept a huge secret between themselves from the Organization they both worked for. Seven years ago, Curaçao accidentally learned important secrets about the MiB and their boss that, for her rank at the time, she wasn't supposed to know, but in trying to neuralyze her, they discovered that neuralyzing didn't work on her. She was immune to it. Alarmed by this ability, the Organization immediately pulled her from active duty, put her on probation, and commenced a full-scale inquiry, including an in-depth medical exam that consisted of an MRI scan of her brain. Of course, the twins had both received physical exams upon arrival after they were inducted into the Organization, but MRI scans were not part of the standard exam. That was how they discovered that the left thalamus deep in the center of her brain had an unusual arched shape – a defect she'd presumably been born with – which was how she was able to remember _anything_ simply by pairing it with a color and was also the reason why neuralyzing didn't work on Curaçao.

While it was a relief to learn that it was just a coincidental brain deformity and not some genetic ability or a new defensive weapon, the whole incident brought Curaçao's integrity into question. With a memorization ability like that, could she even be trusted? She and Gin had both known the extent of her brain's incredible memory and how it worked, but they had kept the ability secret from the very beginning until dire circumstances had forced the truth out of them.

"You've done this before, Gin… keeping dangerous secrets that threaten the Organization's security by not sharing them with those that need to know…" Rum said in a low tone, his voice shaking with fury. "I can understand when you first arrived, because while you were grateful to the Organization, you had just spent five months living on the streets, still didn't fully trust the Organization, and didn't want to put your sister in danger… I can understand that _then_ , but _now?!_ "

Rum's low tone suddenly broke out into a loud shout and his right eye looked wild and mad while his fake left eye remained calm and still, creating a lopsided effect that was even more terrifying than just pure anger if anyone had been present to witness it.

"You've been working for the MiB for nearly eleven years and you _still_ don't trust us?! This is the second time your overly-developed sense of paranoia has threatened your own sister's welfare and it's going to get her killed at this rate! It'll be all _your_ fault if she gets hurt or miscarries the baby because you were too stubborn and prideful to ask for help!"

Without waiting for a reply, Rum slammed the phone down – a useless gesture with a cellphone – on his desk and buried his face in his hands, feeling angry, upset, and worried sick as a choked sob escaped him.

'Emma, where are you?' he thought with despair.

()()()()()

'… _going to get her killed…'_

' _It'll be all_ _ **your**_ _fault…'_

Rum's accusation echoed non-stop in Gin's head for the remainder of the day and well into the evening. He was barely conscious of anything either Vodka or Riesling said to him, he had no appetite for food, and trying to concentrate on work was impossible. He tried to think of what to do with the information Curaçao had sent in the text about the NOCs, but his brain refused to work properly. The only thing he managed to do was send a text to Bourbon asking him to keep an eye out for Curaçao by use of his contacts at the PSB. If she really had been caught stealing from the NPA Headquarters, then at least they would be looking for her too even if they had less than benevolent motives. When he finally went to bed – late – he slept fitfully for only a few hours at a time before he was awake again, restless with anxiety over his twin's fate and unable to function.

'… _going to get her killed…'_

A woman that strongly-resembled Curaçao and had their same ash-blond silvery hair but his green eyes swam unbidden at the forefront of his memory and the old guilt he still felt after nineteen years surged anew. His mother whom he'd killed when he was ten.

' _It'll be all_ _ **your**_ _fault…'_

Another woman's face claimed his mind space after his mother's European features faded away. A bright, optimistic, ever-cheerful woman – with dark blue eyes and black hair with long bangs – that always hid her pain and her tears behind a smile so as not to worry those around her who loved her. Akemi, his best friend who'd been murdered right under his nose without his awareness.

He'd failed them both. Had as good as killed them both. Now the question of Emma's survival hung in the balance. His younger twin was missing while likely enslaved by the same mind controlling drug that had led Scotch, Calvados, and Irish to their deaths, and he was stuck all the way on the other side of the world unable to assist in finding her.

()()()()()

Haibara watched the kids running off with excited yells to get the tickets and the Professor chasing after them with a fond smile on her face when she noticed Conan sniffing the air and turning to stare at a solitary woman sitting on a nearby bench.

"What's wrong?" she asked, but he was already moving towards the woman without answering her question. "Hey, wait-!"

"Hey, are you alright, lady?" Conan asked the woman once he was right in front of her.

It seemed to take her a moment to register that someone was talking to her, before she looked down curiously at Conan. Haibara decided to walk over and join them. She definitely had a unique appearance, especially for being in Japan, but she didn't look Japanese either with her ash-blond silver hair and Caucasian facial features. Was she a visiting foreigner?

"Ah! Miss, your eyes are two different colors!" Conan exclaimed and now that Haibara was close enough, she could see it was true. Her left eye was royal blue and her right eye was black. The woman still had yet to really respond to what Conan was saying though.

"Maybe she doesn't understand Japanese?" she suggested once she was standing by Conan's side, but the woman shook her head immediately.

"No, I can understand it," she said softly.

"What happened? Why are you alone here of all places?" Conan continued as inquisitive as ever. "It doesn't seem like you have any friends with you either. Also, you're hurt on your hands and knees and your phone is broken as well. Do you mind if I look at this?"

"N-No," the woman said, and Conan immediately started playing around with it.

It seemed odd for someone to come to a theme park all by themselves even if they didn't have kids. Was this woman perhaps waiting for someone? "Miss, how long have you been here?" Haibara asked.

"Well…" the woman murmured with an uncertain frown and looked thoughtful.

"Then, how about where did you come from?" she tried instead.

"I don't know," the woman said with a slow shake of her head.

Both she and Kudo gasped and shared a look with each other. Amnesia?

"Miss, what's your name?" Conan asked her seriously.

"My name…?" she repeated and then sighed heavily. "I'm sorry, I can't remember."

"Please show me your head," Haibara said, already going into medical mode.

"S-Sure," the woman said uncertainly, but leaned down over her legs so that Haibara's hands could reach her.

Haibara gently touched the silvery-haired woman's face and tilted her head to the right to view the left side better. She could see some swelling and a freshly-made scab. "It's not a grave wound, but it's recent," she informed Conan as she felt along the injury site to be sure of her diagnosis.

"She probably hurt her head in a car accident," Conan said with a soft sigh.

Haibara released the woman's face and she righted herself. "In that case, it could be traumatic retrograde amnesia and-" She did a double-take. "Wait, how did you know she was in a car?"

That was all Kudo needed to begin explaining the reasoning behind his deduction. "This phone has been completely broken from impact…" he said as he put said phone back next to the woman and picked up something from the bench. "… and look. A crystal shard from a car's windshield."

"So you're saying she hit her head while driving?" Haibara surmised as she stared at the tiny bit of glass held between Conan's fingertips.

Conan continued. "That car was probably an old model. New cars have a film that prevents them from breaking. And besides, she has a bit of gasoline stench on her."

She did? Haibara leaned forward slightly, pulling her short hair back from her face, and sniffed the air near the woman. "You're right," she said.

"Excuse me, lady, but do you have anything else with you?" Conan asked, his voice suddenly much louder than it had been a few seconds ago and seeming to startle her a little.

The woman lifted her arms experimentally and then stood up and felt her skirt. Her left hand slipped into a pocket and when she pulled it back out, she was holding something.

"Huh? What's this?" she said, looking surprised at the object in her hands.

"Can I see it, Miss?" Conan asked immediately.

"Sure, here," she said and leaned down to give it to him, then sat back down on the bench.

"What is that?" Haibara directed her question at Conan.

"What in the world…?" he muttered, completely ignoring her as he pulled the black plastic casing aside and fanned it out. There were five cards of different colors: green, orange, white, blue, and red in that order from left to right. "It looks like a color palette. These cards have semi-transparent colors in them, but what are they for?"

Haibara was just as clueless as the woman the color palette belonged to, and Conan's musings were abruptly interrupted by shouts from the kids calling to them and running back with Ferris wheel tickets in their hands.

"Crap, Trouble's coming back," Conan swore under his breath and pocketed the color palette while Haibara smiled fondly at the returning trio.

When the kids got closer, they noticed the woman she and Conan were standing in front of, and Mitsuhiko said, "Huh? Who's this woman?" as they all drew to a halt.

Ayumi got a quick look at the woman's face and her eyes immediately brightened. "Oooh! Your eyes are two different colors! They're so pretty, Miss!"

"Are they fake?" Genta asked.

"No, Genta, I think she's probably an 'odd-eye'!" Mitsuhiko corrected.

Neither Ayumi nor Genta seemed familiar with the word and were trying to figure out what their friend meant, but Haibara was more interested in why the silver-haired woman looked so upset at the discussion. Had she been picked on so badly for her different-colored eyes that even without her memories, she still had a visceral emotional reaction to it?

"Oh, I know!" Ayumi exclaimed and abruptly drew Haibara's attention back to the conversation. "It has something to do with fur seals because the aquarium lady said they're called otarids! Right Conan?"

Haibara gave a fond, amused sigh that Ayumi knew the word 'otarid', but not 'odd-eye', and it turned out she wasn't the only one that found it funny. The woman was also laughing with her right hand covering her mouth, and she looked even prettier when she was smiling.

She stopped laughing when she noticed everyone watching her and apologized to the kids, but they hardly noticed. "We got the pretty lady to laugh!" Ayumi said excitedly and Genta and Mitsuhiko both looked just as pleased as she was.

"By the way, what are you guys doing over here?" Dr. Agasa – who'd finally caught his breath after arriving when Mitsuhiko was trying to explain to Genta that 'odd-eye' wasn't a name – asked them all.

"You've got great timing, Doc," Conan said, going back into serious mode at once.

"This lady was in an accident and it looks like she has amnesia," Haibara added on, explaining the situation to the professor.

The three kids gasped in shock and Dr. Agasa looked just as stunned. "Is that right, Shin- ah, Conan?"

"Seems that way," Conan said with a nod and looked back up at the woman who sighed heavily and appeared just as tired as when they first saw her. "She might even be connected to last night's accident."

"Then we should call the police right-!"

"-STOP!" the woman suddenly yelled, cutting off Dr. Agasa, making all of them jump, and startling several people nearby that were on their way to the aquarium.

What on Earth…? "Miss, is there a reason you can't go to the police?" Haibara asked worried and confused. Why would she be so dead set against going to them, especially given her current state of memory loss?

The woman looked just as confused as Haibara at her reaction and completely distressed as she resettled herself back against the bench. "I don't know," she said, looking miserable.

"But you need protection," Dr. Agasa protested right before Conan started snapping pictures of the woman on his phone.

She gasped and flinched away from the flash, covering her face. Dr. Agasa and the kids protested since it was upsetting her, but the woman stood up from the bench and started walking away with her shoulders curled forward and her arms crossed protectively over her chest.

"Wait, Miss, we won't report you to the police!" Conan called to her and only then did she stop walking and glance back over her shoulder. "I took a picture so we could find your colleagues," he explained.

"My… colleagues?" the woman said slowly as she turned around to face the shrunken teen detective.

"Yeah, I'll help you look for them and get your memories back," he promised.

The kids exploded at Conan's declaration. "Really, Conan?!" Genta exclaimed.

"Yeah! Let us help too!" Ayumi added.

"Because we are…" Mitsuhiko started.

"… the Junior Detective League!" all three finished simultaneously, beaming, smiling, and posing slightly at the amnesiac woman.

Haibara sighed fondly again at their antics. Were they a youth detective group or a knock-off Power Rangers team? They broke their posing and ran forward around Conan right up to the woman.

" _We'll_ help you look for your friends and get your memories back!" Ayumi declared, repeating exactly what Conan had just said seconds ago.

"Yeah, you can count on us!" Mitsuhiko said.

"Thank you," the woman said with a warm, grateful smile for them.

"Then let's start by searching for someone who knows her," Ayumi suggested to the two boys and both of them agreed.

"Hey, you guys, what about the Ferris wheel?" Dr. Agasa reminded them.

"Forget about the Ferris wheel, Doc! Can't you see there are more important things to do?" Genta scolded the old man, who bemoaned that he'd already bought the tickets while Mitsuhiko suggested they go try asking the nearby dolphin mascot character.

"Step aside, Professor!" Ayumi said cheerfully as she pushed Dr. Agasa out of the way of Mitsuhiko and Genta who started running and dragging the amnesiac woman along with them to begin their search.

"You guys, don't act like this is a game!" Dr. Agasa called out and started chasing after them as well, leaving Haibara and Conan behind at the now-vacated bench.

"Are you really not taking that to the police?" Haibara asked, surprised that he'd told the woman such a thing. Regardless of her having amnesia, if Kudo suspected she'd been involved in the highway car chase and massive explosion from last night, then it didn't seem in-character for him to let her off the hook.

"Of course I am," Kudo muttered as he pulled out his phone. "I'm sending this to Ran to ask her if she can have the old-timer escort that woman to the police, since he's probably just sleeping at his desk in the office not doing any work anyway."

Well, that cleared up her confusion on that score. Haibara waited for Kudo to finish composing his text with one of the attached pictures to his not-wife childhood friend before they started walking together to the theme park to both catch up with the kids and Professor and also find someone who knew the silver-haired woman. While they walked, Haibara considered the woman in question. There was something familiar about her, but she knew she'd never met such a person before, so she wasn't sure why. Perhaps it was just the hair color since it reminded her of Gin's.

()()()()

It was nearly 11 am when Ran got the text from Conan and read the message about the amnesiac woman he'd taken into custody and requesting she ask her dad to escort her to the police. How Conan kept running into cases even when he was supposed to be having fun with his friends at the Touto Aquarium continued to astound Ran despite him having lived at the Detective Agency with her and her dad for nearly a year now. Her dad was downstairs in the office, so she could pop down quick and ask him to help out… but knowing how unreliable her dad could be sometimes, it would probably be a good idea to send the picture and message to Detective Takagi as well.

Ran opened up the picture on her phone so she could save it and then send it. When she saw the photo of the foreign-looking, silver-haired woman with one black and one royal blue iris, she suddenly experienced a weird feeling of déjà vu. The woman seemed familiar somehow, but Ran didn't know why, as she was sure she wouldn't have forgotten meeting a person like her with such distinctive features. She shook her head for a moment and sent it along with a message to Detective Takagi before she started down the stairs to the Detective Agency below.

"Hey, Dad?" Ran called as she entered the office and frowned when she saw her dad sleeping at his desk with his foot propped up on it. At least it wasn't littered with beer cans this time.

She grabbed the remote off the coffee table and turned the volume on the TV all the way down as she made her way over to where her dad was sleeping then positioned herself right next to him.

"Wake up, Dad!" she yelled in his ear.

Kogoro startled awake with a loud squawk, overbalanced, and nearly fell out of his chair, just barely managing to save himself by grabbing onto the back of the rolling chair while his propped-up foot anchored him somewhat.

"Don't slack while working! Are you going to sleep forever or what?" Ran scolded as she opened one of the blinds to let some light in.

"Shut up! Detectives need their mental rest as well!" Kogoro shot back, still trying not to fall all the way to the floor.

"So you drank too much and now you've got a headache, huh?" Ran translated.

"Why'd you… No. I never said that!" Kogoro protested and finally lost his battle with the chair and gravity and tumbled to the floor in a graceless heap.

Ran gave her dad a momentary unsympathetic frown and opened up her phone to the picture of the silver-haired woman Conan was with in order to show it to her dad. "This is from Conan. He's taken a woman with amnesia into custody and wants you to escort her to the police." Her dad perked up and she continued, "For now, I've only told Detective Takagi, but you should help out too, Dad."

"Pretty~!" Kogoro murmured, his eyes glued to the picture of the woman.

"Are you even listening, Dad?" Ran asked in an annoyed tone.

Kogoro shot up to his feet like a cork with a serious expression on his face and clapped his hands around hers holding her phone. "This lady, where is she at?!"

"H-He said they're at Touto Aquarium," Ran answered, thrown off by her dad's sudden energy switch.

"Got it! Onward!" Kogoro exclaimed and used the rolling chair as a step stool to jump onto the desk and freaking _leap_ off of it like a nutjob!

"Hey, wait a minute, Dad-!" Ran protested, but he was already at the door.

"Yes, yes, the Great Detective takes the case!" he declared with gusto.

"-but it's not a job!" she tried to tell him, but he closed the door behind her and was gone, leaving silence in his wake.

Ran huffed in annoyance. Geez, was it any wonder that Mom left when Dad acted _worse_ than teenage boys whenever he saw a pretty woman? She looked back down at the picture on her phone and her annoyance faded, but her brow remained furrowed. She didn't know why, but she still had a feeling that she'd met this woman somewhere before a long time ago… somewhere sad and cold…

()()()()()

It was a little after 3 am in Berlin and Gin was wide awake when his phone rang. He grabbed it and quickly answered it without looking at who was calling before it woke up Vodka in the next bed over.

"Yes, what?" he whispered. As soon as he heard the familiar irritating female voice chuckle in amusement, his previously non-existent irritation skyrocketed and he wished he'd at least checked the Caller ID first.

" _I figured you might be awake despite the early hour given what happened last night,"_ Vermouth said, _"Then you should be pleased with my call, Gin. I found her."_

Gin's eyes shot wide open. There was no need for Vermouth to clarify the 'her' she was referring to and relief surged through him. Curaçao was alive! "Where is she?! Is she alright?" he demanded, remembering at the last minute not to be too loud for Vodka's sake.

" _She's at Touto Aquarium and she seems to be well. She's not walking around like she's injured at least,"_ Vermouth answered.

"An aquarium?" Gin repeated, bewildered. What the heck was Curaçao doing hanging out at an _aquarium_? If Pandora really had gotten to her like he suspected and she'd gone missing, then logistically speaking, they shouldn't have been able to find her so fast. "Does Rum know?"

" _Of course. I informed him first before calling you since I could only imagine how worried you were for your dear twin while being unable to do anything to find her,"_ Vermouth said in that slightly condescending tone of hers that she liked to use when she was mocking someone. _"Don't worry, I'll bring her back soon."_

She hung up before he could say another word and Gin was left clutching his phone with only silence ringing in his ear. Emma was alive. She'd been found, and she was alive, and that eased a _major_ burden off his chest, but now a new kind of alarm was starting to grow because Bourbon had been at the scene of her disappearance, but the first person to find his sister was _Vermouth_.

Vermouth, who was involved with both Calvados and Irish before their deaths…

Vermouth, who abandoned Calvados to the FBI to make her getaway and whom committed suicide…

Vermouth, who had created Irish's disguise as the Superintendent to spy on the serial murder police investigation, then later discovered the real Matsumoto being held prisoner in a cabin in a park while also coming across intel that Irish would supposedly be meeting with Ringore at Tohto Tower to sell out the MiB's NOCs…

The same Vermouth that had made one confirmed and one suspected murder attempt on Sherry, who had tried to hint to Kudo that Kir was a NOC, and who had verbally and blatantly balked at his threat to harm Detective Mouri and Conan Edogawa within the brat's hearing.

A thought took root in his mind. A small, terrifying, and dangerous thought. What if Vermouth was a double agent?

What if she was working for the MiB… and _also_ Pandora?

It would… explain so much if that was the case. Pandora might not be able to enter MiB proper, but Vermouth had no such difficulty. With her high rank and having 'that person's' ear as well, she had ready access to any agent she wished, including the codenamed ones, and the required executive clearance for some of the MiB's highest security-restricted zones and information. Like most things, Gin had no concrete evidence to support his suspicions and usually that didn't bother him, but he would be accusing one of the highest-ranked, longest-employed agents of the Men in Black of treason. _Nobody_ would take him at his word about a mere hunch he had on Vermouth's true allegiance without proof, especially not when he had such a rough, negative history with her.

But if Vermouth really _was_ the one who administered the mind control drug to Calvados, Irish, and maybe Scotch… God, for _once_ , Gin hoped he was wrong, but if he wasn't, then that treacherous woman wouldn't live for even a second longer in his presence, and just in case, he'd better take precautions. He started a new text to Rum and warned him that they might need to consider making a move to hide the liaisons named in Curaçao's text until they understood the situation better. Just in case.

He definitely wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep now, but at least Curaçao was alive. She was still alive…

()()()()()

Vermouth was not pleased. Something had happened to Curaçao last night that had prevented the serum from directing her to return after she'd retrieved the NOC list, but neither had she regained full control and returned to the MiB to rat her out. Vermouth had spent literally the whole night searching for the woman only to find her chilling at the aquarium with a bunch of kids as if Rum didn't have half the Organization looking for her.

No, she was not pleased at all.

Well, Curaçao had her fun; it was time to get back to work. Vermouth approached the ramp near the beginning of the line to get on the Ferris wheel and leaned against it right next to where Curaçao was standing.

"What are you doing here? Let's go back," she said in a low tone just loud enough for the female Kuroda twin to hear her and started walking away.

"Miss, what are you doing? We're gonna leave you behind!" one of the boys shouted.

"Sorry, I feel like someone was talking to me just now," Curaçao apologized and Vermouth paused, staring back over her shoulder in bewilderment. Curaçao was running further _up_ the ramp to where the kids and the professor who lived next door to Shinichi were standing, completely ignoring her order.

"Huh? Did you meet someone you know?" a different boy asked.

"No, I think it was just a misunderstanding," Curaçao replied.

What was going on? Curaçao hadn't tried to attack her nor had the younger woman seemed to recognize her. The mind control serum should still be in her system since it didn't degrade that fast, but she acted like she'd never been drugged at all. Before Vermouth could ponder the matter further, she saw two more children approaching that she recognized all too well: Conan Edogawa and Ai Haibara, or alternatively Shinichi Kudo and Shiho Miyano.

Interesting. So Sherry didn't know what Gin's little sister looked like and Curaçao didn't recognize her either or else Sherry would have found a way to ditch Shinichi to ask either Curaçao or Gin why she was at an aquarium. Regardless, it looked like that was her cue to retreat for the time being. If not even Sherry knew the silver-haired woman was part of the Organization, then there was no need to alert either of them to watch Curaçao more closely.

()()()()()

Haibara didn't know what it was. She _still_ had this nagging feeling in the back of her mind that the amnesiac woman was familiar to her, and that feeling had only strengthened when she saw the triple bullseye at the darts game station.

"… right Haibara?" Conan said and startled her from her thoughts when she heard her name.

"Eh? What?"

"What's wrong? You've been staring off into space for a while," he said.

"Is that so?" she said and started to walk past him when they heard Genta's voice shouting at them.

"Oi, Conan! Haibara!"

"Over here!" Ayumi shouted.

"Look up! Up!" Mitsuhiko directed.

Both Haibara and Conan looked up and saw the three kids waving down at them standing in line with Dr. Agasa and the amnesiac woman. Genta pulled himself up onto the moving railing and leaned over it, causing both shrunken teens to panic.

"Genta, that's dangerous!"

"Get off the railing!"

Their warnings were for naught. Genta's hands slipped and he fell forward, tumbling over the railing.

"GENTA!" Haibara and Conan both shrieked in fear even as their friend managed to catch the ledge before he plummeted straight down to the ground.

The silver-haired woman climbed over the railing and knelt down next to Genta on the ledge, but Genta was a big kid and even if she had the strength to pull him up herself, she had nothing to brace against and not enough space to do so! Haibara could see Conan was thinking fast next to her, evaluating what gadgets he had on hand and how he could use them to save their friend. Her silent prayer was interrupted by Genta's sudden fall and terrified scream, and Haibara clapped her hands over her mouth with a horrified gasp. NO!

The woman jumped off the ledge at the exact same time that Genta fell and everyone, Haibara and Conan included, watched in shock as she not only landed on her feet on the angled support structure, but then slid down it sideways like a snowboarder in a suit and high heels. In an incredible display of timing and strength, the woman used her downward sliding momentum and launched herself like a bullet straight at the falling Genta and caught him! She caught him and held him tight as they rolled and bounced against the painfully-hard support structure along a rounded downward-descending depression in the wall that brought them close to the ground and the woman slid down the rest of the way, still holding Genta protectively against her. Haibara was amazed! She hadn't seen acrobatics like that from anyone since she'd left the MiB, but she had more important things to do than be impressed! She needed to check if Genta was okay, and she ran alongside Conan and two park attendants towards the fallen duo.

"Genta, are you okay?!" Conan shouted worriedly as they got closer.

After the woman confirmed their approach, she turned all of her attention back on Genta who did not seem to be responding. "Genta, are you alright? Hold on!" she yelled in a panicked tone as she shook him.

Haibara stopped and stared as her eyes widened in shock while the last piece fell into place. That voice…! She knew it! Haibara hadn't recognized it earlier because she'd never heard the woman speak in such a soft, gentle tone, but she'd heard the exact tone of her shouting now from in Gin's car over the phone…!

"… _You couldn't have waited until she was_ _ **at least**_ _eighteen?!"_

Haibara now knew exactly why she thought the woman was familiar even though she was also certain she'd never met her before in her life, because she hadn't. Haibara had never once lain eyes on the woman that was Gin's younger twin sister, Curaçao.

Until now, that is…

Haibara moved on autopilot with the rest of the group to the infirmary to make sure that Genta was okay, trying to decide what to do now that she knew the amnesiac woman they'd found was actually Gin's sister and a high-ranking MiB agent. If she'd really been involved in the highway car chase last night and there were no other MiB agents nearby, that meant she'd been missing the whole time and they had no idea where she was. Haibara needed to get away from Conan and the kids as soon as possible and let someone in the Organization know where she was so they could get her before the local police did thanks to Conan's tipoff to Ran's father. It wasn't that the Organization wouldn't be able to get Curaçao back from the police at all, and they could even do it the bureaucratic way with proper transfer paperwork, but it would be an unnecessary hassle to go through.

"Thank you, lady!" Genta exclaimed, startling Haibara out of her troubled thoughts and she spun around to stare at the woman in question while he and the other kids excitedly asked her to accompany them to the Ferris wheel again.

"Are you sure? I don't want to be a nuisance," Curaçao said uncertainly.

Haibara grimaced. The woman really didn't remember who she was and that wasn't good. She hoped her amnesia really was caused by the bump on her head and not from a neuralyzer being set off. Regular amnesia just needed time, but if she lost them to a neuralyzer, she would never get them back unless she met Karasuma or Rum in-person with the reversalyzer. The technology to reclaim memories erased by the neuralyzer was all but completely non-existent when Kay had to regain his to come back to the MiB over two decades ago. Now, the technology not only _existed_ but was effective, portable, and kept under lock-and-key by the Chief and Vice Chief of the Japanese branch so that the technology could not be misused and abused.

"What are you saying?" Mitsuhiko asked with a confused frown.

"You saved my life, Miss!" Genta reminded her.

"Yeah, you're not nuisance," Ayumi agreed.

"Then let's go on ahead and ride it," Conan suggested and started making his way towards the infirmary's exit door.

Haibara nearly threw herself at him to stop his forward progress. "Wait, Edogawa, there's something I have to talk to you about first."

"Uh, okay," he agreed readily.

The Professor stood up and started speaking, "Well, then we'll head over there first-"

"-NO!" Haibara screamed in panic, and immediately felt guilty for doing so at the sight of Dr. Agasa's hurt expression. "Please wait first," she pleaded in a soft, desperate tone.

"A-Alright," he said.

All three of the kids looked put out at not being able to go on the Ferris wheel right then while Conan's eyes sharpened. Haibara felt bad and she wasn't even sure she was doing the right thing either. She didn't know if telling Kudo of her 'suspicions' that Curaçao was a member of the 'Black Organization' was a good call or just going to make things worse. She wasn't as good at predicting peoples' movements as Gin was and this could backfire on her horribly. While alerting Kudo of Curaçao's likely Black Organization membership would make him more cautious around her and more likely to stay out of sight if other agents arrived to retrieve her, he might also try and use her to get more information about the Organization and/or trap her or another member. The group left the infirmary and headed out towards the benches set along the brick paths leading to the aquarium and Ferris wheel.

Haibara turned to the Professor and the kids and said, "If you all wouldn't mind waiting for Edogawa and I over there, we'll rejoin you as soon as we're done."

The kids surprisingly obeyed without much fuss and Curaçao joined them while Haibara led Kudo to a nearby bench and sat down on it.

"Alright, Haibara, you got me alone; what's going on? Is it about that woman?" he asked seriously.

"It is…" she confirmed, still feeling nervous about her decision. "… Kudo… I don't have any proof and I could just be reading way too deeply into something that isn't there, but I think that woman might be a member of the Organization."

"What?! She's one of _them?_ Are you sure?" he questioned.

"No, I'm _not_ …" she insisted. "… but didn't you also get that feeling when you saw the dartboard with the three perfect bullseyes and when she caught Genta as he fell? Now that I think about it, her right eye could be a prosthetic."

"Wait, you can't mean…!" Conan exclaimed in alarm.

"Yes, the Second in Command of those you call the 'Black Organization', Rum," she said in an anxious, quiet tone. "If she really is Rum, then her amnesia could be a lie."

It was another risky move she was making, but she'd rather Conan think Curaçao might be Rum, who he was never going to meet, than discover she was Gin's sister. It was fortunate that except for the hair color, the tallness, and some of their facial features like their nose, they really didn't look that similar. Related, but not similar. They _were_ only fraternal twins after all, not identical and no more genetically similar to each other than any other pair of siblings.

"If I recall correctly, Rum's gender and age are unknown, right?" Conan said.

"Right. Back in the Organization, I heard rumors that Rum is a strongly-built man, an effeminate man, or an old man, and that after he lost one of his eyes in an accident, he got a prosthetic," Haibara reiterated as she had originally explained to Kudo a couple weeks ago when he asked her about him. "If that woman doesn't have heterochromia and one of her eyes is instead a prosthetic, then…" she trailed off fearfully with shaking hands to keep up the act.

"I see, so you think her amnesia might be an act, but why would she need to pretend if she wants to approach us?" he asked.

"T-That is…" she stammered uncertainly, but Conan wasn't done.

"I admit that after seeing her abilities, I can believe she might be a member of the Organization, but if she's really amnesiac, then I could make use of it to-"

"-No, we can't let her get her memories back!" she protested loudly, her tone both angry and fearful.

She knew it! She _knew_ he would go that direction with this situation and that was exactly what she was trying to prevent!

Haibara jumped off the bench and pointed her finger directly in his face. "You! Don't tell me that you want her to recover her memories to get info on the Organization! You aren't thinking something like that, are you?! If you do that, it won't be just you and I that are targeted, but those kids as well!" she accused, pointing across the lawn at their young friends.

Except the kids and Curaçao were nowhere to be seen! There was only the Professor surrounded and covered with pigeons.

"DOC!" Conan screamed as he and Haibara pelted to the other side in a terrified frenzy, he for fear of the kids' safety and her for having lost visual on Gin's sister.

The yelling and the running startled the pigeons into flight.

"Wait, don't fly away!" Dr. Agasa protested unhappily to the departing birds.

"This isn't the time for that, Doc!" Haibara shrieked, near hysterical.

"Where did the kids go?!" Conan demanded.

"Huh? Wha-? But they were just here!" Dr. Agasa said, looking around bewildered.

"Shit," Conan muttered angrily under his breath and pulled out his cellphone to call one of them.

Haibara hovered by his shoulder to listen, but all they got was Mitsuhiko's voicemail. "Damn it, you guys!" he swore and ended the call without leaving a message.

"They're probably at the Ferris wheel since they wanted to ride it so badly earlier," Haibara guessed.

"Yeah, let's go," Conan agreed and all three of them started running back towards the Ferris wheel again.

They had been running for several minutes already when Conan skidded to a stop. Haibara shot past him a few feet before she too stopped and backtracked a bit.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Conan answered, "My phone's ringing. It could be…"

He pulled his phone out of his left front pants pocket and looked at the screen, his eyes narrowing.

"Like I thought," he said, briefly showing her the screen with Mitsuhiko's name on it, and then answered the phone. "Hey, Mitsuhiko, where-?"

It wasn't Mitsuhiko's voice that interrupted. _"Conan, please help us!"_

Conan's eyes widened. "Ayumi? What's wrong?!"

Haibara gasped and leaned in close to hear the younger girl's next words. _"We were riding on the Ferris wheel and the lady suddenly fell ill!"_ Ayumi said tearfully.

"How is she right now?" Conan said calmly.

" _Umm… she's holding her head in pain and she's saying words, but we don't understand anything. Mitsuhiko is writing it down,"_ she explained.

"Okay, I got it," he said.

" _Conan, please hurry!"_ Ayumi pleaded pitifully.

It pained Haibara's heart to hear her so distressed, but there was nothing she or anyone could do until their gondola got back down to the ground. She was worried about Curaçao too. What happened to her? Had her head injury caused some kind of internal damage that she hadn't been able to diagnose from a simple external observation? Oh please let her be okay! Conan stayed on the phone with Ayumi the whole time and there were more panicked noises from the kids when Curaçao fell unconscious, but Conan talked them through what to do to provide her emergency first aid and ordered Mitsuhiko to perform CPR if she stopped breathing. It was a lot to ask a first-grade child to do, but he was their best and only option, being both the most knowledgeable and level-headed of the kids. While Conan remained on the phone with them, Haibara ran to go find one of the park staff and inform them of the situation on the Ferris wheel so that when Curaçao and the kids finally reached the ground, she could be immediately delivered into the hands of trained adult medical personnel.

()()()()()

Vodka yawned loudly and shook his head to try and clear some of the cobwebs. "Some coffee would be nice right now," he muttered.

"Somehow, I don't see too many coffee places being open at 4:30 in the morning unless it's from a fast food place," Gin said as he peered through the lingering early morning darkness down both sides of the road. His lack of visibility was made even worse by the thick fog covering the city.

He'd slept badly all night, but after Vermouth's call an hour and a half ago along with the frightening possibilities his mind had entertained, he'd completely given up on the pretense of sleep, woke up Vodka, and called Riesling to have her come meet them on Liebknecht Bridge, or 'dear servant' was how the name translated. He didn't like that Riesling's name was on that list Curaçao had sent, and if she was in danger, then he wanted her close by. Neither agent was happy with him forcing them out of bed to match his insomnia, but he didn't care. He wasn't going to let Pandora take another agent under his watch.

"Even fast food coffee sounds really good right now. As soon as Riesling gets here, we're finding the closest Starbucks or whatever place Riesling knows that's closer, and you're paying for everything," Vodka grumbled.

"That's fine," Gin said, one of his hands fiddling with the cigarette pack in his coat pocket.

He was both bored and anxious and he wanted a smoke, but he'd finally reached the point where he was down to smoking one cigarette a day, and he didn't want to waste his one smoke so early in the morning before daybreak even. The sudden ringing of his phone in the silent misty morning distracted him momentarily from his discomfort and he pulled it out, frowning when he saw the Caller ID. Vermouth…

He answered it anyway and brought the phone to his ear. "An hour and a half is _not_ soon when you already have visual on someone; have you gotten Curaçao back or not?" he sniped.

" _I do not, unfortunately. There were some complications that prevented me from doing so,"_ Vermouth said unapologetically.

Gin clicked his tongue in annoyance and anger. Of course there were. "Like what?"

Vodka tapped his shoulder and pointed down the road where both of them could make out a pair of car headlights coming their direction. Gin nodded and gestured for Vodka to deal with it. Hopefully it was Riesling since she should be arriving soon, but if it wasn't, Vodka could handle the situation accordingly and move the driver on their merry way.

" _She was acting strange, and I was finally able to figure out why. She appears to have amnesia."_

Gin's brow furrowed in confusion, as if the words Vermouth had said were part of a foreign language he didn't know. Amnesia…? _His_ sister with amnesia? The woman who had probably the best memory in the world had _lost_ her memory? That was impossible. It _had_ to be impossible!

"Where is she now?" he said instead.

" _She was taken into police custody and moved to their hospital,"_ Vermouth answered.

"So the police have gotten involved as well?" Gin muttered, feeling his irritation starting to slip into his tone.

Great. As if they didn't have _enough_ problems going on right now without having to do a run-around to get Curaçao out from under the regular civilian police authority.

" _Seems so, and there was something else odd that pricked me as well,"_ Vermouth said aloud in a musing tone, but not sounding like she was mocking him for something _she_ knew, but _he_ didn't.

"What was it?"

" _It seems she had a seizure when she was riding on the Ferris wheel here at the aquarium,"_ she said.

"A seizure, you said?" Gin repeated with way more intensity than he meant to.

" _Yes."_

Gin suddenly found his mouth very dry. A seizure? Just like… he swallowed heavily before saying, "Understood. Let Rum know if you haven't already."

He hung up on Vermouth without waiting for a reply and released a shaky breath. A seizure on the Ferris wheel at Touto Aquarium. Their mother had been plagued with seizures all her life, but since neither he nor Curaçao had shown any predisposition for them, he'd thought they were both safe. Was this first seizure a sign that Curaçao took after their mother in yet another way or was there a separate, unrelated cause behind it? On a whim that Gin didn't fully understand himself, he pulled up the aquarium's website on his phone and tapped over to first the aquarium's map and after quickly scanning the area around the Ferris wheel, he jumped over to the section of the site dedicated to the Ferris wheel itself. The pictures popped up on the screen first and he squinted at them. The first one was in full daylight, but he could still see a familiar light color arrangement. He scrolled down a little further until he finally found a night picture of the Ferris wheel, and it was exactly what he was looking for. It _was_ the same color arrangement and transparency as Curaçao's-

"-Aniki, is everything okay?" Vodka asked, making Gin quickly look up from his phone to see both Vodka and Riesling watching him with concern.

"Not really…" Gin said as he closed the website and put his phone away. "That was Vermouth just now. Curaçao has amnesia, had a seizure, and is now in police custody."

Riesling gasped and Vodka looked alarmed. "A seizure?" he repeated, knowing about his mother's history with them.

"Ah, but I don't think it was a normal one either, and I'll get her back from the police too, but at least she's alive and safe for now," Gin said to reassure them as much as himself. "Now I believe you two want coffee, yes? Riesling, you tell me where to go and I'll drive."

()()()()()

It was a whole half hour later after Curaçao was loaded into the ambulance to be taken to the police hospital before Haibara was able to get away from Kudo and the kids by having Dr. Agasa drop her back off at the house by claiming she didn't feel well. Kudo was going back home with Detective Mouri and Dr. Agasa was taking the kids to Café Poirot for a kinda late lunch since it was about 1 pm. As soon as she was home and the yellow Beetle was out of sight, the very first thing that Haibara did was lock the house and call Gin.

He picked up almost immediately. _"Sherry, what's wrong?"_ he demanded sharply.

"Nothing with me…" she hurriedly reassured him, "… but I wish I was calling under better circumstances. I finally got to meet your sister with Kudo, the Professor, and the kids completely by accident at Touto Aquarium, but she has amnesia. I didn't recognize her at first because I've never met her and have only heard her voice once, but once I did, I didn't want to lose sight of her and I had to tell Kudo something to explain why I was so anxious about her. I had to tell him I believed she was a member of the Organization and I also had to let him believe she might be Rum so that he didn't start wondering if there was a connection to _you_ through her. At one point though, she and the kids gave us the slip and she had a seizure while she was riding the Ferris wheel, so as of this moment, Curaçao's currently in the police hospital and Kudo's still holding on to her smartphone even though it's broken."

When Gin spoke again, he didn't sound either relieved or worried like she expected, but dangerously angry instead. _"… Kudo was there?"_ he said coolly.

"Yes, he was," Haibara confirmed in a small voice. Why was he so mad?

There was a pause and then Gin said, _"Vermouth found her at the aquarium too. She told me about the amnesia, the seizure, and that the police have her now… I can forgive her not knowing about Curaçao's phone, but she didn't_ _ **once**_ _mention or even hint that Kudo was involved."_

Haibara's jaw went slack and her eyes widened. Vermouth had been nearby and not only had she not sensed her, but Vermouth had kept Gin ignorant of Kudo's presence near his sister and that was crucial information he needed to know! "Gin, what does this mean?" she asked worriedly.

" _That we could have made a very grave error in how we handled this situation otherwise, and I now know what I need to do,"_ Gin said darkly, but his tone softened marginally when he added, _"Thank you for calling me about this, Sherry."_

"Hey, Gin, wait a moment!" Haibara said quickly before he hung up.

" _Yes?"_

With a short, relieved sigh, she said, "Can you make sure to keep your phone close in case there's a new development that happens on my end that you need to be aware of? I want to know that I can reach you no matter what and I don't want this to be like when Kogoro returned to the Detective Agency the day Kir got captured by the FBI."

" _No… I don't want this to turn out like that either,"_ Gin agreed heavily. _"My phone will be on and available, but I might not be able to answer a phone call immediately depending on what I'm up to. If you leave me a text or a voicemail though, I will get to it as soon as I can. And Sherry, I'm glad that you're worried about my sister too, but please be careful and make sure to take care of yourself first. I don't want anything to happen to you either."_

"I understand. I'll be sure to stay out of the way," said Haibara. "Take care, Gin."

" _I will,"_ he said and then hung up.

()()()()()

It may have been nearly 1 pm in Tokyo when Haibara called Gin, but it was barely 5 am of that same day in Germany when Gin ended the call with his young, shrunken lover and returned to his fellow agents with their coffees who were watching him with perplexed expressions, since as soon as he'd seen the call was from Sherry, he'd separated himself from them to answer it.

He looked from Vodka to Riesling with cold green eyes like steel and said, "You're in danger. You, Stout, Aquavit, Bourbon, and Kir were all named as NOCs and that, from an outsider's point of view, would get you all killed. This would not be an issue for us except that that list is currently in the hands of an individual with close connections to the FBI and if that data is accessed and nothing happens to you, the FBI will be rightfully suspicious."

"Well, what should I do?" Riesling asked, understanding but concerned all the same.

"You need to go dark and completely disappear off the face of the Earth by this evening, even faking your death if it comes down to it. Vodka and I will help you go into hiding while other agents will help Stout and Aquavit do the same. We'll have to do something a little different for Bourbon and Kir, but they'll be protected too. I don't know for how long you three will need to remain hidden…" he said, his voice like ice as the image of the blonde American woman came to the forefront of his mind. "… but if I have my way, it won't be for longer than a _week_."

It took the whole rest of the day to get everything prepared, but by 8 pm, Gin had successfully managed to get Riesling safely hidden away, partly thanks to some of the local alien population who were very fond of their local agent and more than willing to help take care of her. Her boss at the BND had been informed of her situation in only the vaguest possible terms, but he understood and would 'update' her status as KIA accordingly. He had also received confirmation texts from Korn and Chianti that Stout and Aquavit were safe as well and gave them new orders to spy on the police hospital holding Curaçao and listen in on the PSB officers when they moved to retrieve her. All that was left before he and Vodka returned to Japan now was to update Rum on their current status and let him know his next plan of action.

" _Yes, Gin?"_ Rum answered as soon as he picked up the phone.

"Stout, Aquavit, and Riesling have been taken care of, so we're heading back to Japan," Gin started. "Can you have Vermouth fetch Bourbon and bring him to… Warehouse C-1 at Pier 45's shipping yard? Vodka and I will get Kir after we arrive and bring her there as well."

" _I can, but what are you planning to do with those two, Gin?"_ Rum asked, his tone cool and suspicious.

"You know I believe that when Curaçao broke into the NPA Headquarters and stole the NOC list she was under the effects of a mind control serum-" Vodka gasped in shock. "-yet she still made a distinction in her text to you about Bourbon and Kir separate from Stout, Aquavit, and Riesling, which I find odd. I'm wondering if it was maybe her way of telling us that _those_ two have been compromised and are also under the mind control serum's influence."

" _I can see where you're coming from Gin, but then why would Bourbon call me and let me know what happened to Curaçao instead of just remaining silent?"_ Rum pointed out.

"To throw you off the scent?" he suggested with a disgusted sneer. "It's not an uncommon tactic for one spy to sell out another just to curry favor with the group they've infiltrated in order to gain a higher status and obtain more important information. They might not be, but I'd rather be safe, than sorry."

" _Very well, I'll leave you to it then. Let me know how it goes,"_ Rum said and hung up, so Gin did so too.

"Aniki… what _are_ you going to do?" Vodka asked, looking worried.

Gin met his gaze through the sunglasses for one silent minute and then said, "I'm going to interrogate the both of them and figure out if they're being mind-controlled or not. Let's go."

"But Aniki, is it really necessary to go that far? I know Bourbon's been acting reckless lately, but that doesn't mean he's being manipulated, and Kir's done nothing at all!" Vodka protested.

"How do you think Kudo knows about Rum?" Gin asked.

"Eh? What are you talking about?" he said, looking perplexed.

"Rum. Sherry was the one who called me earlier to tell me what happened to Curaçao, including her phone being in Kudo's possession, and she also mentioned that Kudo knows about Rum. Kudo's direct sources of information about the Organization are limited to only two people: Sherry and Kir. Sherry never would have told Kudo about Rum unless he already had the name and was fishing for more information, so the only other way he could have gotten it was from Kir through Akai or the FBI, but I never gave her any clearance to reveal a new piece of information, let alone Rum's name," Gin explained coolly. "Maybe there's a different explanation for why Kudo knows about Rum, but I'm not taking any chances."

Vodka swallowed nervously, but didn't protest further and fell into step behind him as they returned to the car.

Gin didn't tell Vodka that he had another reason for why he wanted to interrogate those two that wasn't solely about determining _their_ true allegiance. He wanted to see if Vermouth would reveal herself if he threatened the NOCs she needed for her _true_ master's plans if she was indeed a traitor as he suspected.

()()()()()

"Yes, the woman's at the Tokyo police hospital," Bourbon told Kazami over the phone from his car in the parking lot of the very same hospital he was about to enter. "I don't mind if you have to use extreme measures to get her out of there and into PSB custody. I'm counting on you, Kazami."

" _Yes, sir,"_ Kazami answered and Bourbon ended the call.

He knew it sounded ruthless of him, but it would be much easier for him to bring her back to the MiB once she was under PSB custody instead of that of the regular Metropolitan police. He got out of his Mazda to go inside, but stopped short when he saw Vermouth just ahead and watching him.

"Bourbon, what are you doing here?" she asked lightly.

"To bring Curaçao back to us, of course. Why else would I be here?" he retorted.

"Why else, indeed?" she mused. "But I'm afraid I will have to halt your progress on that front. It seems you're needed elsewhere at the moment."

"More than I'm needed here? On whose authority?" Bourbon inquired.

Vermouth smirked. "Rum's. Apparently, Gin wants to discuss something with you this afternoon and if you don't cooperate, I will unfortunately have to resort to force," she said and pulled back part of the dark purple coat she was carrying in her right hand, revealing the tip of a gun silencer.

Bourbon tensed momentarily and then forced himself to relax, though he was far from easy. "Very well. If it's the will of the Organization, then it seems I have no choice but to comply."

The American woman's smirk widened. "Smart answer, Bourbon. Go on. We'll be using your car to get to the meeting location. I'll direct you where to go."

With no other choice and the gun discretely pointing at him all the while, Bourbon backed up and reentered his car from the driver's side while Vermouth slid into the passenger's seat. Bourbon didn't let it show on his face, but he was worried. He had no idea what he'd done this time, but he knew he was still on Gin's bad side after his big screw up over Akai. The fact that Rum had ordered Vermouth to retrieve him on gunpoint in lieu of getting his lover out of the police hospital faster only put Bourbon even more on edge, and he was dreading this meeting more with every passing second.

()()()()()

"I'm sorry, but I still don't know anything about what happened," the silver-haired amnesiac woman answered again, and her response was met with another soft sigh of disappointment from the orange-coated inspector sitting across from her.

She wished she could be more helpful to Inspector Megure's investigation, but she barely knew how she ended up at the aquarium the kids had found her at in the first place. All she had was a vague impression of just needing to get away as fast and as far as possible. From what though, she couldn't remember, and it was impossible for her to remember anything before that either. A sudden ringing sound coming from the younger male officer with the gray suit distracted her thoughts and all eyes turned to him. He freaked and fumbled his phone out of his pockets, quickly apologizing to his superiors even as he answered the call.

"Mitsuhiko, what are you doing calling me? I'm in the middle of something right now?" he whispered frantically, but not quiet enough to not be overheard. "Eh?! All three of you are here right now in the lobby and you want to meet her?! Alright, I'll ask, but I can't promise anything!" Then he hung up.

"What's going on, Takagi?" Megure asked calmly.

Takagi jumped and turned to face the inspector looking embarrassed. "Well, it's Mitsuhiko, Genta, and Ayumi who were the first ones to find this woman along with Conan. They're downstairs right now asking if they can see her."

The woman perked up. Those sweet kids from yesterday were here and wanted to see her? "Could I?" she asked brightly, and all three officers looked at her surprised. "If it's not any trouble, I'd like to see them too."

Megure, Takagi, the female officer, Sato, and another male officer named Chiba all gave each other questioning looks. At last, Megure nodded and said, "Very well, I see no harm in it. Seeing as they were the first ones to find you, seeing them again may even be able to help you recover your memories. We can head down to the lobby now since I doubt we'll make any further progress here. Takagi, if you wouldn't mind greeting the kids ahead of us, we'll make an exception just this once."

"Yes, sir!" Takagi said with a salute and left the room quickly.

The woman didn't care much if seeing the kids helped her regain her memories or not, she was just excited to see them again and happy that they'd come all this way to see her. It made her heart feel all warm and fuzzy inside. She stood up and let the accompanying officers and one of the regular ones escort her downstairs to the hospital's front lobby where she could already hear the kids' excited yells. They were here! They were really here!

She didn't even notice how her hand twitched as if to rest on her abdomen.

Takagi ducked down and made a shushing noise. "Quiet! It's a secret that you guys are here!"

"A secret to whom?" Megure said dryly.

"Ah, sorry. I'm too used to these situations," Takagi said as he rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment, but the silver-haired woman only had eyes for the three children who came around from behind and stopped right in front of them, their innocent young eyes glowing with joy.

"Miss, we came to see you!" Ayumi exclaimed.

"I'm glad! You seem much better, Miss," Mitsuhiko added in relief.

"Your head doesn't hurt anymore, does it?" Genta asked.

The woman full out beamed at them. "No, I'm all better now. Thank you so much for asking."

Megure started speaking, "Normally, we wouldn't let you three meet her, but she seems to trust you guys, so you might be able to help her regain her memories."

All three of them lit up like stars at his proclamation and expressed their gratitude with very enthusiastic yells that the woman couldn't pick out individually, though the meaning was perfectly clear.

"But only until the next inquiry begins, alright?" Megure cautioned in a warm tone.

"Okay!" they shouted in agreement and then all three of them reached for her through the officers.

Megure and Sato both stepped aside to allow it and the woman gladly took their hands. They dragged her along behind them, just like yesterday at the aquarium, and led her over to one of the many rows of green couches where an Othello game with black and white pieces and a green gameboard was set up on a table.

"We were in the middle of playing this while we were waiting to see you," Genta explained. "Do you wanna be on my team? Mitsuhiko and Ayumi are working together too, so this way it's more even."

"Sure, I'd love to," the woman said and sat down on the couch on Genta's right side across from the other two kids who happily took up their positions on the other side of the board. "Whose turn was it?"

"Ah, it was Genta's because he tried to put a piece in a spot it couldn't go," Ayumi remembered.

"Oh yeah, that's right, so it's my turn still!" Genta said excitedly and then looked up at her. "Where do you think I should put it?"

"Hmm, well…" the woman said thoughtfully as she looked over the gameboard with a critical eye. "How about over there?"

Genta placed the piece and turned the black piece he'd sandwiched over to white. "Hey, that one worked!"

The three kids and the woman continued playing the Othello game while the police officers watched over them from nearby and it quickly became apparent that Genta having an adult helping him was turning the tide of the game in his favor.

"Here!" Ayumi said as she laid down one of her black tiles and turned another one black.

She hopped back up onto the couch now that her and Mitsuhiko's turn had ended and Genta turned to the silver-haired woman next to him. "Where should I put the next one?"

"Let's see… maybe that square will do," the woman suggested.

Genta followed her suggestion which turned a black piece over to white, but it also severely limited the number of effective moves the other two children could make. "Alright, how's that?" Genta said proudly to his friends.

They looked concerned and thoughtful. "What should we do?" Ayumi asked Mitsuhiko, who seemed to have a naturally more intuitive, analytical mind between the three kids, even for being only seven years old.

"This _is_ a problem," he said as he crossed his arms and rested his hand on his chin, thinking seriously about the board game before him.

"We did it, lady!" Genta said happily.

"It sure seems so," the woman agreed with a warm smile for the boy.

"Oh, that's right!" he said suddenly and reached into his pocket. "Here, this is for you."

"Hm? This is for me?" she asked as she gently plucked the white plastic object from his hands. It was smooth and hard and shaped like a dolphin with a loop attached to the back near the dorsal fin.

"The darts stand staff gave it to our friend Conan after we left," Ayumi explained.

"Yeah, he said you could paint it in your favorite color," Mitsuhiko added.

"Really? Are you sure I can have this?" the woman asked, staring in awe at the cute little dolphin figurine.

"Of course! You saved my life after all!" Genta said enthusiastically.

"And now we all match!" Ayumi pointed out, pulling out her own pink dolphin keychain as did Mitsuhiko with his green one and Genta with his blue one.

"Yeah, what color do you want to paint it?" Mitsuhiko said curiously.

"Red? Pink?" Ayumi suggested.

"If it were me, I'd choose black, but having more of a shattery shade," Genta piped up. The woman wasn't quite sure what he meant by a 'shattery' shade though. "I think white fits you better than black. Your hair is white anyway, so if you choose white, you don't have to paint it. It'd be a bargain!"

"Genta, that's so wrong," Mitsuhiko said dryly.

"It sounds like we're in a bargain sale," Ayumi agreed in the same tone.

"Like it even matters, right?" Genta said, looking back up at her at the last second.

The woman wasn't sure why, but she just found it so cute and funny that she couldn't help but laugh, and then the kids started laughing too until Genta accidentally kicked the table with his foot. The board game jumped, scattering the pieces while Genta squawked and overbalanced, nearly falling off the couch. The woman managed to grab a hold of him just before he did so, and she sighed in relief.

"Are you okay, Genta?!" Mitsuhiko asked worriedly.

"Y-Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry about that," the bigger boy answered, sounding a little shaken from the scare, but otherwise okay.

"Is everyone alright over here?" Sato asked as she came over with Takagi to check on the commotion.

"Yeah, we're okay," Mitsuhiko and Ayumi reassured the two officers while they and the woman started regathering the pieces.

"Ah! No way!" Genta gasped in dismay as soon as he saw the state of the Othello board. "I was winning and now…!"

"You were winning just because she was helping you!" Ayumi pointed out.

While the kids bickered over the state of the game, the woman replaced the game tiles back on the board in the exact color and square that they had occupied. She wasn't even guessing. Somehow, she could see it in her head exactly what the state of the game had been right before Genta had kicked everything over and she was just making the board in front of her match the image in her head.

"Excuse me, I'm Kazami from the PSB," an unfamiliar male voice announced loudly to the room at large that made the woman look up from her work to glance back at the man in question.

He was wearing a dark green suit with a red tie, had short dark brown hair, eyebrows that resembled mascara wands, and black oval-framed glasses over his long, narrow eyes.

"I was told Inspector Megure is in charge of this case. Are you Inspector Megure?" he asked of the heavyweight orange-coated man who had stepped forward.

"I am Megure," he confirmed.

"In that case, we'd like to take custody of that woman over there right away," Kazami said.

"Why's that? We should also have authority to investigate this," Megure inquired calmly.

"That woman is suspected of having broken into the NPA Headquarters," Kazami answered to the shock of both the kids and the woman in question.

The NPA Headquarters? She knew she didn't have her memory right now, but she couldn't have possibly done something like that, could she?

"We need to figure out her goals as soon as possible," Kazami continued, and the woman ducked her head and turned away, feeling the confused, innocent eyes of the kids upon her as she stared down at the white dolphin figure in her hand with her arms crossed almost protectively over her stomach.

Even if he said that, he wouldn't get anything out of her, because she didn't know herself what her goals might have been. Had she really broken into a police headquarters? And why? Was she some kind of thief or a spy, an enemy of the law? Was that her true nature? If that was the case… then white didn't seem to fit her after all, did it?

"W-What'll happen to you, lady?" Genta stammered worriedly.

"I don't know," the woman said softly, still not looking at them. She didn't want to see their disappointed expressions.

"Come on guys, the visit's over now," Sato said gently to the three kids.

"It's about time for you all to go home, right?" Takagi said.

"Aww, do we have to?" Ayumi said unhappily.

"I'm sorry kids," Sato said and then turned to her. "Come, you should also return to your room now."

"Okay," the woman said and stood up to accompany the officers Sato and Chiba.

"Wait, you can't leave!" Mituhiko protested as she started walking away and all three of the kids jumped out of their seats.

"Lady, don't go!" Genta exclaimed.

The silver-haired woman felt herself choke up at their pleas and paused to turn around and face them, holding up the precious white dolphin keychain figure that Genta had given her. "Thank you, everyone. I'll take good care of this," she said softly, but she couldn't bear to see their cute young faces so stricken with sadness. "Let's all ride the Ferris wheel again one day, shall we?"

They latched on to her words like a ship's anchor in a storm-tossed sea. Ayumi nodded in agreement, Mitsuhiko said "You promise us?", and Genta asked "We'll ride it with you?"

She nodded once; a yes to all of them.

"Come on, let's go," Sato said, not unkindly, and the woman resumed her walk back to her room, with her heart heavy and tears that stung at the corners of her eyes.

She looked down at the white dolphin figurine in her hands and gently clasped her fingers around it, this physical symbol of her bond with those darling children. She hoped she hadn't made a liar out of herself. She truly wanted to be able to keep her promise to ride on the Ferris wheel with them again; she just didn't know if she'd be given the chance to.

()()()()()

Kir had just finished her work at the news station for the day after covering for one of her coworker's afternoon shifts on her day off. She was tired and ready to be done, and that was her only excuse for why she didn't immediately notice the two black-clothed people waiting for her at her car in the parking garage until she was nearly right on top of them.

"Oh…!" she gasped when she suddenly noticed Gin and Vodka and then exhaled in relief with a hand resting on her chest. "Oh, thank goodness it's just you two. I didn't see you there at all."

"I'm afraid it's a little early for you to be relaxing, Kir," Gin said in a deathly cold tone that made her blood freeze and her heart pound. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

"Gin…? Vodka, what's going on?" Kir asked even as she took an automatic step back and her brain was already racing, looking for an escape route.

In a blur of movement, Gin had brought his gun to bear on her and clicked the safety off, and Kir's breath hitched in her throat as she stared down the barrel of the no-doubt loaded gun.

"I'm going to have to ask you to come with us, Kir," Gin said and Kir felt a shiver run down her spine.

The icy green eyes glaring at her through his long bangs were not those of her supervisor and friend who'd saved and helped her recover from her torture four years ago, but those of Jynnan Tonnyx, the fearsome, murderous, merciless scourge – the demonic 'Silver Bullet' – of the alien criminal underworld.

"If you run, I will shoot, and I won't miss, but I'd rather not do that if I don't have to," Gin warned as he slowly approached her, his aim on her forehead unwavering. "I have an appointment scheduled with you and Bourbon for this afternoon to discuss a few of your recent actions in regards to the Organization as of late and attendance is _mandatory_."

She swallowed nervously and glanced at Vodka from around Gin's shoulders, but the squarely-built man remained determinedly stone-faced and Kir felt some of her hope wither and die. She would find no clemency there, and she didn't even know what she'd done!

"Whatever you think I've done against the Organization, you're wrong," Kir said quietly and didn't react at all when Gin grabbed her arm, still with his gun on her and dragged her to his car which she hadn't even noticed was parked nearby.

" _I'll_ be the judge of that," Gin retorted coolly, not letting up on his grip for even a second.

()()()()()

"Oh, Shinichi, the analysis is over!" Dr. Agasa called and while it was intended for Kudo, Haibara heard the Professor as well, and she crept over to stand just outside the door and listen in from the hallway after Kudo rushed in.

"Great, what do you have?" Conan asked impatiently.

Dr. Agasa lifted the computer screen off the table and angled it downward for Conan to be able to read it. "Here, see for yourself."

Fortunately for Haibara's benefit, Conan read the phone's last sent message out loud, "The NOCs are Stout, Aquavit, and Riesling, and those you were concerned about-" Conan gasped. "Bourbon and Kir-! Damn it, I knew it!"

Haibara gasped in alarm too, but not for the same reasons Conan did. That text was written like a Black Organization operative, but without a reason for doing so and it was a list of only a small handful of the current, active MiB liaisons. Why had Curaçao written a text like that and who had she sent it to? She'd already heard from Conan earlier that three of the NOCs presumably listed had already been killed – though she couldn't trust that was completely accurate since his information source was the FBI and they didn't know about the Men in Black. Whether the MiB had sent them into hiding or another entity had gotten to and eliminated them, they had been compromised and now Bourbon and Kir were at risk too, and a terrifying thought shook her. What if it was Pandora? What if she was finally making her move and going after even more codenamed agents?!

"Please analyze the destination of that message immediately and let me know as soon as you figure it out!" Kudo requested of the Professor and grabbed his skateboard on the way out of the room.

Haibara reached out and just managed to grab his wrist as he was running by, halting his forward progress.

"Haibara…?" he murmured in bewilderment.

She shook her head. "Don't go… please…" she begged desperately.

She wished she could say more and make him _understand_ that this time wasn't like all the others… That it was so much more dangerous with even more at stake that he couldn't even begin to comprehend… but she couldn't say anything, and the heavy silence dragged between them instead, full of things that would _remain_ unsaid.

"I told you before, didn't I? Don't run away from your own fate," Conan reminded her, referring back to when she'd tried to let herself be killed on the bus so that she wouldn't have to face Vermouth, put the kids or Kudo in any incidental danger from being associated with her, and would be able to see Akemi again.

Yes, she remembered…

Conan smiled at her, and it was full of understanding and sympathy, but also pure, unwavering determination. There was no regret to be found in his honest blue eyes. "I don't want to run either," he said.

Even then, Haibara couldn't have told anyone why she released Conan's wrist then and let him go because she didn't know herself. Maybe it was his sincerity or his simple, pure motivation. Maybe it was how even _not_ knowing the full consequences of the path he was about to undertake or what was at stake, he was still willing to jump right into the fire and risk life and limb to protect anyone he could if that was what he needed to do. It was admirable… awe-inspiring… and made Haibara feel woefully inadequate by comparison. Her lover's twin sister was at the epicenter of a disaster, the MiB's liaisons were in danger, and she was hiding away shut up in her safehouse not doing anything. She _should_ be helping; she was just as much a member of the MiB as the others and was even one of the few scientists to be presented with a codename.

Well, she supposed there was at least one thing that she could do to help right now. Haibara retrieved her cellphone from where it was charging in her room and sent a quick text to Gin explaining that Kudo now knew the content of the last message Curaçao's phone had sent, was probably on his way to meet up with the FBI again, and he was having Dr. Agasa analyze the address of the message recipient to send a finishing message to it seemingly from Curaçao's phone and thus clear Bourbon and Kir of suspicion as NOCs.

()()()()()

Gin had just finished lighting his one cigarette for the day and was working on the portable light stand when Sherry sent the text message to his phone, but he didn't see it, too occupied as he was with his preparations for the impending interrogation.

"Gin, what the hell is going on?! You seem to suspect us both of being traitors!" Bourbon yelled at him.

"From the information Rum received from Curaçao after she broke into the NPA Headquarters two nights ago…" Gin clicked the switch and blinding white light flooded the previously pitch-black warehouse. "… you _have_ been named as traitors," he finished as he moved out of the way of the light stand and sat down on a nearby crate.

Bourbon and Kir both were in full view of the light, handcuffed to one of the central load-bearing beams with grim and shocked expressions. This was their first time hearing such a thing and it was Vermouth's too that they might be traitors. Vodka was the only one present apart from himself who already knew that Curaçao had broken into the NPA and what this interrogation was for, but now everyone was all on the same page. Gin had spent most of the plane ride back to Japan from Germany thinking long and hard, when he wasn't recovering lost sleep, about how he wanted to handle the interrogation. He didn't want to unnecessarily kill innocent coworkers, but neither did he want a rat to slip through his clutches.

"Traitors…?" Vermouth questioned quietly, frowning slightly.

"From _Curaçao_?!" Bourbon exclaimed angrily. "She broke into the NPA to steal the NOC list and it wasn't authorized by Rum! There's nothing on that list that you don't already know that would make us suspicious!"

"Not by Rum, but by _me_ …" Gin corrected. "… and you're right about the NOC list having no extra information, but Curaçao acquired information from _other_ sources that paints a very different picture."

"Well, maybe you should check the other sources she used to come to such an outrageous conclusion that we're traitors," Kir snapped. "What motivation pray tell would I even have for betraying the MiB?"

"The MiB's failure to protect your father from being killed…" Gin answered easily. "… and you, Bourbon, for the MiB's inability to prove the truth of what happened to Scotch and failure to exact justice against his perceived murderer."

"That's bullshit!" Bourbon shot back.

Gin gave a derisive sniff and a slight grin. "I've heard worse reasons."

"If you really thought we were traitors, you'd have killed us already instead of kidnapping us first," Kir pointed out calmly, though her eyes were anything but. "You're as good as admitting you doubt our inauthenticity!"

"That's true…" Gin admitted, sliding his left hand into his coat. "However…" he stood up and drew his gun from the shoulder harness to bear on the two MiB liaisons.

"Gin!"/"Aniki!" Vermouth and Vodka both protested simultaneously, looking just as shocked as Bourbon and Kir at the gun in his hands.

"My way is to root out trouble at its earliest stage. So…" he spat out the cigarette and crushed it underfoot. "… let the judgement of the traitors commence!"

Gin fired and the shot echoed loudly throughout the enclosed space. There was the sound of a lot of liquid splattering on the ground followed by a metallic clatter and Kir dropped to her knees with a strangled cry and her eyes screwed shut in pain. There was a new hole in the left shoulder of her jacket just below the joint itself and the fabric around it was quickly becoming stained red with blood.

"What's wrong, Kir? Continue. You were undoing the handcuffs, weren't you?" Gin said mockingly.

"You shot a comrade even though she's only a suspect?!" Bourbon yelled furiously.

"I decide if you're comrades, not you," Gin said coldly. "I'll give you one last minute of grace, and I'll let whichever one of you who sells out the other witness a rat's miserable death."

He let the threat of the ultimatum and the weight of it hang heavy in the air for a few seconds before he glanced over at his partner who was watching Kir worriedly.

"Vodka, start the countdown," he ordered.

Vodka looked up startled for a moment, but nodded and pulled his sleeve back to look at his watch. "Got it… Sixty seconds…"

Now that time was ticking, the pressure would start building, and then Gin would have his answer. Were they mind-controlled or genuine? He would know soon enough.

"Like that kind of threat will work on me!" Kir shouted.

"If she said she's a traitor, then she'd be admitting it, and there's no way you'd overlook someone like that!" Bourbon protested.

"Fifty seconds," Vodka announced.

"Heh, I wonder about that. I'm kinder than you think, right _Kir_?" he finished with a low growl and turned his gun upon her again, subtly increasing the pressure.

He heard Vodka call out the forty second mark and he could see the sweat at her temple, her wide eyes, her tight jaw, and her trembling shoulders. She was scared, and she wasn't able to hide it, but she didn't utter a sound.

Gin turned the direct intensity off of Kir and changed tactics a bit. "So you're accomplices and have decided to help each other, huh?"

"Help each other? I don't know if she really is a traitor or not," Bourbon answered.

"Me either, but I swear I'm not a traitor!" Kir declared, even as Vodka announced the thirty second mark.

"That's my line!" Bourbon exclaimed.

Gin nearly grinned. They were at half-time now and even Bourbon's composure was faltering. Mind-controlled or not, a dead spy was a useless spy and unless there was literally no way out, spies had good preservation instincts. They would do anything they could to stay alive, whether it was begging for mercy, running away, or selling out a fellow spy. His threat that he would kill one of them at the end of a minute was successful because that was the kind of man he was, and they both knew it. His reputation and his history of past behavior made him a highly-effective interrogation tool.

"Now…"

"Twenty seconds," Vodka said.

"… which of you is the rat?" Gin asked in a soft, sinister tone as he adjusted the aim of his gun from Kir's head to Bourbon's.

"Gin, don't tell me you're serious about this!" Vermouth said, and she actually looked concerned. Well, well! Was his tactic actually working on Vermouth too?

"Which one will bail first?!" he demanded, his tone taking on a feral intensity as he casually shifted the gun back to Kir again.

"Ten seconds… Nine…"

Down to the wire!

"Eight… Seven…"

"Well, then?!" Gin said. They were running out of time to act if they were going to!

"Six…"

"You, Bourbon?" Would they break or persevere to the bitter end?

"Five…"

"Kir!" It was now or never!

At four seconds, Bourbon suddenly dropped to his knees and Gin's eyes flashed malevolently. Gotcha!

"You go first…" Gin said triumphantly as he aimed the gun straight at Bourbon for what would be the last time.

"Zero!" Vodka called the end of the minute.

"… _Bourbon!_ "

Just as Gin was about to pull the trigger, there was a clatter from overhead and small metallic pieces seemed to rain down on him in slow motion. He saw an object tumbling through the air out of the corner of his eye and managed to retract his arm and step away just in time. The object collided head on with the portable light stand, knocking it down and smashing the bulbs, immediately plunging everyone into pure blackness.

"What the-? What happened?!" he demanded.

"The lights!" Vodka exclaimed.

"Kir! Bourbon! Don't move!" he snapped and aimed his gun in their general direction.

He couldn't make out specifics in the darkness, but if he saw _any_ odd movement, he wouldn't hesitate to shoot first, ask questions later.

Light appeared to the right of where he was aiming and he briefly saw Vermouth's face lit up by the screen of her phone before she turned on the flashlight and aimed it at the tied-up liaisons. Or make that a single liaison since Kir was the only one there, sitting there limp and lifeless-looking on the ground with the only trace left of Bourbon being an open, empty pair of handcuffs.

"Bourbon's gone! He ran away!" Vermouth exclaimed.

And that meant he was as good as marked in Gin's book as he approached the unresponsive Kir, observing her with a critical frown. She hadn't given in. She didn't try to sell out Bourbon or anyone else, nor did she beg for him to spare her life. She was clean and remained entirely herself. However Kudo had come to learn of Rum, it wasn't because of Kir. Gin only regretted that he'd gone and put her through all of this. His only mercy for her was that at least it had only been for a minute instead of the _hours_ she'd suffered at the hands of her father's killer all those years ago.

"Damn it, how?!" Vodka swore as he set the light stand back up again, even though it wouldn't do them any good now that the bulbs were smashed.

'That's exactly what _I'd_ like to know,' Gin thought as he dropped to his knees beside Kir.

He held up the lockpicked handcuffs with a silent snarl when the warehouse door suddenly burst open with a bang and orange sunset light flooded in.

"After him!" Gin barked. That rat was _not_ getting away from him that easily!

Vodka abandoned his work resetting the light stand and ran out of the warehouse after the traitor with Vermouth bringing up the rear, but a buzzing noise stopped her and she pulled out her phone. Gin ignored her and instead turned to Kir who seemed to have revived from her lifeless stupor, but she was now watching him warily.

"I'm sorry, Kir," he said sincerely as he laid his gun down on the ground and instead pulled out a key with which he unlocked her handcuffs. "You didn't deserve that, but I didn't know how else to test you. I'm glad to say you passed and are no longer under suspicion."

He gently helped Kir stand up, mindful of her injured, still-bleeding shoulder. As soon as she was standing on her own though, she glared up at him hatefully. That was Gin's only warning before his head suddenly snapped to the right with a loud _smack_ and was accompanied by a new, painful stinging feeling in his left cheek.

"You deserved it!" Kir said shakily, her angular blue eyes seething with fury and her right hand still raised.

"I did," Gin said calmly.

"I should slap you again!" she said a little louder and more hysterical.

"You should," he agreed.

"Damn it, stop agreeing with me!" she spat furiously. "I was _this_ close to having a relapse thanks to you and this sick joke of yours!"

"Believe me, Kir, it was no joke at all, and it gave me no such pleasure to do it to you either," Gin said with a squirming guilty feeling in his gut. He'd known she wouldn't take it well, but he hadn't realized her reaction to it would be quite _that_ bad.

Kir scoffed in open disbelief and threw her hands up in the air. "Could have fooled _me_! You looked like you were about to start salivating at getting to kill one of us! It's no wonder Bourbon chickened out and risked running away rather than facing you!"

"Speaking of Bourbon…" Vermouth piped up and interrupted their conversation, apparently having just gotten off the phone. "… it appears Rum received a new text from Curaçao that said Bourbon and Kir aren't involved."

Gin frowned in suspicion as he stooped down to retrieve his Beretta. "Did her memories return?" he asked while he activated the safety and returned the gun back to his shoulder harness.

Even if they did though, according to Sherry yesterday, Kudo was the one who had Curaçao's phone, so she still shouldn't have been the one who sent that message to Rum. Quickly, he pulled out his own phone and saw to half his surprise that there was a new text message. He opened it up and saw the sender was Sherry. Kudo had found out about the content of Curaçao's last sent message, had been on the way to the FBI to inform them of it, and had the Arquillian send a finishing message to Curaçao's same recipient – in this case, Rum – that stated Bourbon and Kir weren't involved, so that they wouldn't be offed as NOCs discovered within the Black Organization.

That meant the object that had fallen from the ceiling and collided with the light stand right as he was about to kill Bourbon had more than likely been Akai's work. He didn't know how Akai would have found out or even guessed that he'd bring Bourbon and Kir to this specific location, but then Akai always seemed to have a frustratingly annoying habit of being able to predict his moves. If Akai had been the one to cause the blackout though, then maybe…

"Bourbon, I know you're still in here!" Gin called out into the warehouse. "Come on out of hiding now, and I promise I won't shoot you on sight!"

"He did actually put his gun away and turn on the safety for all the good that means for us!" Kir added in a very dry, sarcastic manner that seemed much more appropriate coming from Sherry than it did from her.

"You know what? Fuck all of you!" Bourbon's voice snapped just as irritated and he actually came right out into the open from his hiding place behind several stacked crates, glaring at Gin all the while and just as mad as Kir.

Gin raised a curious eyebrow at Bourbon while his hands remained visible and weaponless. "Well, now, you didn't actually run or remain hidden so you could run later. I guess that means you pass the test too."

Bourbon looked taken aback. "Test? I do?"

"Gin, _what_ test are you talking about?" Vermouth demanded.

Gin's eyes flickered to her and narrowed slightly before shifting back to Bourbon and Kir who were looking at him confused. Vermouth was the only one he'd gotten nothing out of except for some momentary concern at him threatening to kill the CIA and PSB NOCs, but that wasn't enough for him to point fingers. Vodka had been concerned too; it was normal. That didn't mean he'd given up on his suspicion that she was a double agent working for Pandora against the Men in Black.

"I lied earlier," he revealed as he stuck his hands back in his coat pockets. "Curaçao didn't name either of you as traitors in her message to Rum, but we did discover a few odd things that might have compromised the MiB's secrecy and could have been linked to either of you. I had to quickly verify if you were both legitimate before any more information leaks occurred, so that's why I treated you both like branded traitors instead of merely suspected ones."

He was still lying, but there was a bit more truth to the lie this time. Even though Bourbon and especially Kir deserved the full truth from him, he wasn't about to give it while Vermouth was still standing next to him.

"Vermouth, did Rum say anything else while he was on the phone with you?" Gin asked.

Vermouth nodded and crossed her arms. "Yes, he wants us to verify that the message he received was really from Curaçao because she's still not responding back to him, but if we have to break into the police hospital to retrieve her, that'll be hard to pull off, even for us, and going through the bureaucratic hurdles would take a while."

Gin smirked and pulled his phone back out again. "Don't worry about that. If I'm right, then _they_ should have started moving by now," he said with a meaningful glance at Bourbon and brought his phone to his ear, listening to the rings.

" _Nice timing, Gin! The PSB airheads have finally gotten on the move,"_ Chianti reported gleefully.

"As I expected," Gin said, his smirk widening with satisfaction.

" _They don't even realize they're being tapped. What amateurs!"_ the Irish-descended woman scoffed.

It was a good thing Gin wasn't on speaker phone right now, otherwise Bourbon would have been offended at her comment. "Where are they heading to?" he asked.

" _Heh, they're heading exactly where you said they would,"_ she said smugly. _"They're putting her in the car right now."_

 _Finally_ she was out of the damn police hospital and was now under a more manageable amount of police security. Better yet, they were planning on taking her back to the aquarium which was key.

"Excellent. Pull out and get _that_ aircraft ready," he ordered.

Everyone, including Chianti and Korn over the phone and Vermouth, Kir, and Bourbon on his end, gasped in shock. _"You don't mean…?!"_

"It's as good a chance as any to try out its equipment," Gin reasoned.

" _But isn't it still in the prototype testing stage right now? It doesn't even have working camo tech on it yet!"_ Chianti pointed out.

"It's an order from Rum to get Curaçao back as soon as possible. We have to make sure our mission is successful," he said.

" _Got ya!"_ Chianti crowed and ended the call.

"Gin, don't tell me you truly intend to use that thing!" Vermouth protested immediately as soon as he got off the phone.

"Aniki, it's no good, Bourbon got aw- wait, hold on, how did he get back here?" Vodka asked in bewilderment as soon as he saw the other blonde half-Japanese man standing in the warehouse next to Kir both unrestrained and unhurt.

"It's alright, Vodka, he's good," Gin said. "Akai was probably the one who caused the blackout and kicked the door in to make us think Bourbon ran out while he was actually still stuck in here with us. When I realized what had happened, I asked Bourbon to come out of hiding, promising I wouldn't shoot him if he did so, and since he did, that told me he wasn't a traitor, and neither is Kir for that matter."

"Oh… Well, that's good at least. A lot sure happened in the few minutes I was gone," Vodka commented.

"Indeed," Gin agreed and that reminded him… He sent off a quick text to Rum confirming that neither Bourbon nor Kir were mind-controlled, and then turned to Bourbon. "Once we get out of here, I need you to call your subordinates at the PSB and whoever's taking Curaçao to Touto Aquarium, let them know that she has to be taken to the Ferris wheel. We'll be easily able to retrieve her from there with the aircraft's equipment and if Curaçao really hasn't regained her memories yet, I think that Ferris wheel will be the ticket."

Bourbon nodded grimly. "Understood."

Gin quickly shot him a stern look. "And don't you _dare_ let your vendetta with Akai get in the way of your work again…" he warned, guessing that the FBI agent had probably also figured out what their next move would be and would try to thwart their attempt to retrieve his sister. "… but it would be helpful to have you there on site if Akai's efforts to stop us threaten to be successful."

"Yes, sir," Bourbon snapped off a little too readily for Gin's comfort, but he couldn't afford to be too picky right now. At least in this situation, Bourbon's animosity towards Akai might be helpful instead of a hindrance.

Then Gin turned to Kir, looking at her blood-stained shoulder with both guilt and regret, and he handed her his handkerchief. "Here, use this to put pressure on the wound. Vodka and I can at least drop you off in the city so you can take a taxi to the nearest hospital. You'll be reimbursed for the travel cost and the Organization will absorb the medical billing as usual if it's not an MiB-sanctioned facility. You have the rest of this week and all of the next for paid time off if you want it. Just get that wound taken care of, and then go home and relax. Don't worry about anything else tonight."

Kir silently accepted the handkerchief with a nod and replaced her hand with the cloth. She was hiding it well, but Gin could still see in the jerky twitching of her eyes how badly shaken up she was by what he'd done.

He turned to Vermouth last. "I'll need you to head over to the Ferris wheel at the aquarium as well and set up the power system to fail so that the grounds are cast into full darkness and nobody will be able to see the aircraft coming."

"I can do that," Vermouth agreed with a nod.

"Good, you all have your assignments, now let's go," Gin said as he led the way out of the dark warehouse. He had a sister to save.


End file.
